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Dessert

Macedoine of Fruits

A layered fruit jelly dessert made with currant, orange, wine, lemon jellies, candied cherries, candied oranges, grapes, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Macedoine of Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly layers

  1. Melt each jelly separately.

  2. Pour one jelly into an oiled mold and let it firm up.

  3. Layer some fruit on top of the set jelly.

  4. Pour in another jelly and let it set.

  5. Repeat layering fruit and jelly until all ingredients are used.

Set and serve

  1. Place the mold on ice until the macedoine is completely firm.

  2. Turn the mold upside down to serve.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

  3. Wine + grapetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together819 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-p-menthene-8-thiol (grapefruit).

  4. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly
Provides the bulk of the set gel and a tart, fruity flavour.
Candied cherries
Add sweetness and a chewy texture, and show through the clear jelly.
Grapes
Add juicy pieces of fruit that contrast with the firm jelly.

The step that matters

Let each jelly layer set before adding the next. Gelatin-based jelly must firm up before more liquid is poured over it or the fruit. If the layer is still liquid, the layers blend and the fruit floats or sinks instead of staying in place.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, wine, lemon, grape. 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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