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Dessert

Macedoine of Fruit

A layered dessert of wine jelly and assorted fruits, chilled in a salt and ice bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and pear work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 223 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Macedoine of Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jelly

  1. Prepare wine jelly.

  2. Let the wine jelly begin to set.

Layer the fruit

  1. Boil fresh fruit in syrup.

  2. Drain the fruit before layering.

  3. Layer the jelly and assorted fruits in a mold, starting with a layer of jelly.

  4. Fill the mold with layers of jelly and fruit before the jelly is fully stiff.

Freeze

  1. Place the filled mold in a mixture of salt and ice, covering it tightly.

  2. Let it freeze for several hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Wine + peartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Pear + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together254 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Wine + syruptop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Wine jelly
Forms the set layers and gives the dessert its body and sweet flavor.
Assorted fruits
Provide the fruit pieces, flavor and visible color in each layer.
Syrup
Sweetens the fresh fruit as it boils and carries flavor into the fruit.

The step that matters

Fill the mold before the jelly is fully stiff. If the jelly has set firm, new layers will not bond to it and the fruit may float or separate. Filling while the jelly is still partly liquid lets the layers fuse into one dessert.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, syrup):

  1. Pearthe original
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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