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Tutti Frutti Preserve

A preserve of mixed fruit steeped in white French brandy and sugar.

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. Prepare the fruit: leave strawberries whole, stone cherries, and peel and quarter apricots, peaches, and plums. Seed grapes and remove skins if desired.

  2. In a wide-mouthed earthen or glass jar, combine the brandy and fresh fruit.

Macerate

  1. For every pound of fruit, add ¾ pound of granulated sugar.

  2. Stir the mixture thoroughly with a wooden spoon every day.

  3. 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 that keeps the fruit from spoiling while it steeps.
Fresh fruit
Provides the flavor, color and bulk of the preserve.
Granulated sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and helps preserve it while it sits.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture daily. Daily stirring keeps the sugar dissolving evenly and prevents fruit near the top from exposure and spoiling, so the whole batch macerates uniformly.

Swap the grape

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, apricot, peach, plum, 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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