Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
To Crystalize Fruit
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the coating
Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.
Dip the fruit in the beaten egg with the stems upward.
Drain the fruit and beat the excess egg again.
Dip each piece of fruit into finely powdered sugar.
Dry and serve
Cover a pan with fine paper and place the fruit on it.
Set the pan in a cool oven until the icing becomes firm.
Pile the fruit on a dish and place it in a cold area.
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.
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 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
- Egg whites
- Form a thin, sticky coating that the sugar clings to and dries into a crisp icing.
- Finely powdered sugar
- Dries onto the egg coating to form a crisp, sweet, glassy shell.
The step that matters
Setting the icing in the cool oven. Egg white needs gentle, dry heat to set without browning or weeping. Too hot an oven can colour or puff the icing, while too little drying leaves it sticky.
“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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