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Tutti Frutti Preserve

A preserve made by layering fresh fruit with brandy and sugar, then steeping for a week.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tutti Frutti Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a wide-mouthed two-gallon jar, combine the brandy and sugar.

Add the fruit

  1. Add fresh fruit daily, starting with strawberries. Use whole berries, and for cherries, apricots, peaches, and plums, remove the pits and peel and quarter them.

  2. For grapes, remove the seeds and skins as desired.

  3. Stir the mixture thoroughly with a wooden spoon each time you add fruit.

Rest

  1. After adding the last fruit, cover the jar and let it sit for a week before using.

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. Apricot + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

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

  2. Apricot + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Apricot + grapetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together477 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Plum + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

White french brandy
Acts as the preserving liquid, keeping the fruit stable and extracting its flavor over time.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the preserve and draws moisture from the fruit, helping to preserve it.
Fresh fruit
Supplies the flavor, color and texture of the preserve as it steeps in the brandy syrup.

The step that matters

Stir after each addition of fruit. Sugar must be fully dissolved and evenly distributed through the brandy as each batch of fruit goes in. Undissolved sugar left at the bottom can leave fruit unevenly preserved and prone to spoiling.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brandy, sugar, apricot, peach, plum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar, apricot, 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.

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