Skip to main content
Dessert

Puree of Fruit Sauce

A sweet fruit puree sauce made with strawberries, raspberries, cherries, peaches, pineapples, apricots, apples, butter, sugar, arrowroot, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Peach and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 342 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Puree of Fruit Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Crush the strawberries, raspberries, and cherries.

  2. Chop the peaches, pineapples, and apricots.

  3. Grate the apples directly into a pot.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Heat the creamed mixture until it boils.

  3. Dissolve the arrowroot in cold water and stir it into the boiling mixture.

  4. Cook for 2 minutes, then add the fruit quickly to prevent discoloration.

  5. Heat everything together until scalding hot and 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Peach + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together342 recipes

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

  2. Apricot + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  3. Pineapple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together377 recipes

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

  4. Peach + appletop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together303 recipes

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

  5. Peach + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together168 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour, and bulk out the purée.
Raspberries
Add tart, aromatic fruit flavour and colour to the purée.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Arrowroot
Thickens the boiling mixture into a glossy, smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the fruit to the boiling mixture. Arrowroot thickens best when added to boiling liquid and then cooked briefly. Adding the fruit quickly after the 2-minute cook limits prolonged heat, which helps keep the fruit's colour from darkening and stops the sauce from overcooking.

Flavor stand-ins for the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, pineapple, apricot, apple, butter, sugar):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Sweet potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Beetrootabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, pineapple, apricot, apple, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Mixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesPineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipes