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Dessert

Candied Fruit

A sweet preserve made by cooking fruit in sugar syrup until dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Candied Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a rich syrup by combining 1 pound of sugar with ½ cup of hot water in a shallow vessel.

Candy and dry

  1. Drop in the halved fruit and cook slowly until clear.

  2. Drain the fruit from the syrup and lay them on plates.

  3. Dry the fruit in a heater for twenty-four hours until sufficiently dry to pack in jars.

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 + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

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

  2. Plum + bartlett peartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Peach + bartlett peartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the syrup that penetrates the fruit, preserving it and giving it sweetness.
Peaches
Main fruit, which becomes translucent and sweet as it cooks in the syrup.
Plums
Main fruit, which softens and turns clear as it cooks in the syrup.
Cherries
Main fruit, which becomes translucent and sweet as it cooks in the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the fruit slowly until clear. Slow cooking lets sugar syrup gradually replace the water in the fruit. Rapid boiling can toughen the fruit or break it apart before it becomes translucent and properly preserved.

Swap the bartlett pear

The recipe marks bartlett pear as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, peach, plum):

  1. Apricotfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Bartlett pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, peach, plum. 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 candied fruit recipes

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