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Dessert

Crystallized Fruit

A dish of various fruits coated in beaten egg whites and powdered sugar, then dried in a cooling oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 114 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Crystallized Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Select the finest fruits, leaving their stems on.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

Coat with sugar

  1. Dip the fruits in the beaten egg with the stems facing up, then drain them.

  2. Re-beat the egg that drips off and dip the fruits into finely powdered sugar.

  3. Place the sugared fruits on a sheet of fine paper in a pan.

  4. Put the pan in a cooling oven until the icing firms.

Serve

  1. Arrange the crystallized fruits on a dish and store in a cool place.

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. Peach + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Pear + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Peach + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Form a thin, drying coating that holds the powdered sugar to the fruit.
Finely powdered sugar
Forms a sweet, crisp icing shell over the fruit.

The step that matters

Putting the pan in a cooling oven until the icing firms. The icing must dry and set without browning or softening. Sugar and egg white set as they dry, so heat that is too high can brown or weep the coating, while too little drying leaves it sticky.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, orange, lemon, peach, pear, pineapple):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, orange, lemon, peach, pear, pineapple. 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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