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Drink

Fruit Frappe

A chilled beverage made with sugar, water, mashed fruit, citrus juices, egg whites, and rum or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Frappe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water for 5 minutes.

Combine and freeze

  1. Add mashed fruit, lemon juice, and orange juice.

  2. Beat the mixture until cold.

  3. Fold in egg whites and rum or sherry.

  4. Freeze until soft, ensuring it is not stiffer than mush.

Serve

  1. Serve in glasses at afternoon teas.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg whites
Whipped or folded in to add airy lightness and a soft, frothy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and, dissolved in boiling water, forms a syrup that keeps the frozen texture soft.
Mashed fruit
Supplies the main fruit flavour and body to the frappé.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Freeze until soft, not stiffer than mush. Sugar and alcohol lower the freezing point, so the frappé stays partly slushy. Freezing it solid gives a hard, icy texture, so it must be checked and kept soft.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg, rum. 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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