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Fruit Soup

Fruit soup made with cranberries, raisins, apples, pears, sugar, and thickened with cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the apples and pears into small pieces and soak them in lukewarm water for one hour.

  2. Stem and seed the raisins.

  3. Boil the cranberries or currants in water for 15 minutes, then press through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Return the liquid to the soup kettle and add the soaked pears, apples, and raisins.

  2. Boil all together for one hour.

  3. Moisten the cornstarch with a little cold water.

  4. Add the moistened cornstarch to the boiling soup.

  5. Stir constantly until it thickens.

  6. Add the sugar 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Apple + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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

Cranberries or currants
Provide the tart, fruity base and colour of the soup once pressed through a sieve.
Dried apples
Add body and sweetness as they soften during the long simmer.
Dried pears
Add soft texture and mild sweetness as they rehydrate and simmer.
Cornstarch
Thickens the soup when heated in liquid, giving it a smooth, body-rich consistency.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the cranberries or currants.

The step that matters

Adding the moistened cornstarch. Cornstarch must be mixed into cold water first, otherwise it clumps when added to hot liquid. It thickens only when the soup is boiling, so stir constantly to keep it smooth and even.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, apple, pear, sugar. 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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