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Dessert

Puree of Fruit Sauce

A sauce made by puréeing mixed fruits with butter, sugar, and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 342 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Puree of Fruit Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crush the strawberries, raspberries, and cherries.

  2. Chop the peaches, pineapples, and apricots.

  3. Grate the apples directly into a pot.

  4. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the creamed mixture until it boils.

  2. Dissolve the arrowroot in cold water.

  3. Stir the dissolved arrowroot into the boiling mixture.

  4. Cook for 2 minutes.

  5. Add the prepared fruit.

  6. Heat everything together until scalding hot.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Peach + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together342 recipes

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

  2. Apricot + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  3. Pineapple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together377 recipes

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

  4. Peach + appletop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together303 recipes

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

  5. Peach + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together168 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the acidity of the fruit.
Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour, with some natural acidity.
Raspberries
Add bright, tart fruit flavour and colour to the sauce.
Cherries
Contribute fruity sweetness, body and colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the dissolved arrowroot into the boiling mixture. Arrowroot thickens when heated but can clump if added to a dry or unstirred mixture. Dissolving it in cold water first and stirring it in while the liquid is boiling lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Flavor stand-ins for the arrowroot

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Sweet potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Beetrootabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, pineapple, apricot, apple, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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