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Dessert

Candied Fruit

Peaches, plums, and apricots candied in a thick sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and apricot 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 ↓

Candied Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup and cook the fruit

  1. Boil water and sugar together to make a thick syrup.

  2. Add peaches, plums, and apricots to the syrup and cook until tender.

Soak, drain and dry

  1. After two days, remove the fruit from the syrup and drain it.

  2. Sprinkle sugar on each piece.

  3. Dry the pieces in the sun.

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 + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, draws out water to help preserve it.
Peaches
Form the main fruit body that absorbs the syrup and becomes tender when cooked.
Plums
Add fruit body and tartness that the sugar syrup softens and sweetens.
Apricots
Add fruit body and flavour that the sugar syrup softens and sweetens.

The step that matters

Cooking the fruit in the syrup until tender. Cooking must stop once the fruit is tender, because overcooking breaks down its structure and makes it mushy. The syrup should be thick so that it can absorb into the fruit and draw out water, which helps preserve it.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Plumthe original
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

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