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Dessert

Fruit Candy

Fruit candy is a sweet confection made by stewing sugar with lemon juice or vinegar and adding dried fruit or preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Fruit Candy

Why it works: Raisin and fig work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fruit Candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew 2 pounds of sugar with the juice of 2 lemons or 1 cup of vinegar flavored with lemon essence to make a syrup.

  2. Add chopped raisins, figs, dried cherries, or any firm preserves to the syrup. Mix well and allow to cool before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the syrup that sets into the candy and provides sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.
Chopped raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.
Chopped figs
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.
Dried cherries
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, fig. 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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