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Tutti-Frutti

A preserved fruit mixture made with alcohol, sugar, and assorted fruits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Tutti-Frutti

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stone jar, combine 1 pint of alcohol with 10 pounds of assorted fruits.

  2. Add 10 pounds of sugar, using 1 pound of sugar for each pound of fruit.

  3. Stir the mixture daily until finished.

  4. Seal the mixture in fruit jars when complete.

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. Banana + apricottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate (fruity).

  2. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  3. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

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

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

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

Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and draws juice from the fruit, helping form a syrup.
Alcohol
Preserves the fruit by inhibiting microbial spoilage during steeping.
Fruit
Provides the flavor, color and bulk of the preserve.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture daily until finished. Daily stirring keeps the sugar dissolving evenly and prevents fruit pieces from sitting exposed at the surface, where they can spoil. Sugar must fully dissolve to draw out juice and build a stable syrup.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, banana, apricot):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, banana, apricot. 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.

More tutti frutti recipes

Ice Cream 57Cake 11Punch 8Icing 7Filling 6Ice 5 See all 17 →

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