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Dessert

Fruit Loaf

A custard loaf made with milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, macaroons, cherries, and nuts, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 349 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a little cold milk, then add it to the scalded milk.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks and sugar, and cook until smooth and thick.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the crumbled macaroons, Maraschino cherries, and nuts.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and set it on ice.

  2. Serve cold with whipped or plain cream.

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. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so it sets into a firm, sliceable loaf.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and thicken the custard, adding richness and body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the milk and eggs.
Crumbled macaroons
Add almond-like flavor and a soft, crumbly texture to the set loaf.
Maraschino cherries
Add sweetness, color and a fruity flavor throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until smooth and thick. Corn starch must be fully heated to swell and thicken, and the egg yolks must be cooked gently to thicken without curdling. Stop once it is smooth and thick, because undercooking leaves it runny and overcooking can make it grainy or scrambled.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, corn, egg, sugar):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, egg, sugar. 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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