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Dessert

Grape-fruit or Shaddocks

A grapefruit cut in halves, sugared, and flavored with sherry or rum, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Grapefruit and sherry work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 37 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Grape-fruit or Shaddocks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the grapefruit in half crosswise and remove the bitter white membrane.

  2. Using a silver spoon, bore a small hole in the center of each half.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill each half with fine sugar until it can hold no more.

  2. Pour 1 teaspoon of sherry or Jamaica rum over the sugar.

  3. Serve immediately while the fruit is ice-cold.

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. Grapefruit + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Grapefruit + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together309 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit
Supplies the tart juice and bitter edge that the sugar balances.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the fruit and softens its sharp, bitter edge.
Sherry or jamaica rum
Adds aroma, plus a little sweetness and warmth to the fruit.

The step that matters

Remove the bitter white membrane. The white pith under the skin is intensely bitter, and leaving it in makes the fruit taste harsh. Cutting it out fully lets the sugar and sherry balance the juice instead.

Swap the grapefruit

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Grapefruitthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry. 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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