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To Candy Fruit

A method of coating preserved fruit with sugar to produce candied fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and peach are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,308 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Candy Fruit

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Drain the preserved fruit on a sieve.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water; heat until dissolved.

  3. Place the mixture over moderate heat until boiling.

Candy and dry

  1. Add the fruit and stir continuously until the sugar coats it and becomes candied.

  2. Remove the fruit to a sieve and dry it in a warm oven or in front of a fire.

  3. Repeat the process two or three times if desired.

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. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 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

Loaf sugar
Forms the syrup that coats the fruit and crystallizes as it dries, giving the candied finish.
Preserved fruit
Provides the fruit base that absorbs the sugar syrup and becomes candied.

The step that matters

Stirring the fruit in the boiling syrup. Stirring continuously keeps the sugar from crystallizing unevenly or sticking to the pan, so the sugar coats each piece in an even layer as the syrup thickens.

“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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