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Dessert

Dried Fruit

A dish of soaked and cooked dried fruit sweetened to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Dried Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash dried fruit well in warm water.

  2. Soak in cold water until plump, preferably overnight for prunes.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook soaked fruit in the soaking water until tender.

  2. Sweeten to taste and simmer for five minutes.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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. Plum + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Plum + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Apple + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Plum + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried fruit
Provides the main flavour and, once soaked, the soft texture of the finished dish.
Water
Rehydrates the dried fruit during soaking and forms the cooking liquid for tenderising.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the tartness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Soaking until plump. Dried fruit needs enough time in water to rehydrate fully; soaking softens the cell walls so the fruit cooks evenly and becomes tender rather than tough.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Quincefits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, peach, apple, apricot, pear, 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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