Name: Tutti-frutti
Ingredients: 1 pint good brandy or alcohol; any desired fruit; sugar

Why it works: Brandy and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tutti-frutti

Ingredients

1 pint good brandy or alcohol
any desired fruit
sugar

Directions

Build the batch

In a 3‑gallon crock, combine 1 pint of brandy or alcohol.
Add any desired fruit as it comes into season.
For each bowl of fruit, add 1 bowl of sugar.

Prepare the fruit

Cut large fruit into small pieces and remove stones from cherries and seeds from oranges.
Avoid using fruits with many seeds.

Stir and store

Stir the mixture every morning until all the fruit has been added.
Keep the jar covered and stir once a week during summer.

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.

Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Brandy or alcohol: Preserves the fruit and carries its flavor, helping to inhibit spoilage.
Sugar: Sweetens the mixture and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out moisture.
Fruit: Supplies the main flavor, aroma and texture as it steeps in the spirit.

“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.