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How to Ice Fruits for Serving

A chilled fruit dessert coated in egg white and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and grape match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 238 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

How to Ice Fruits for Serving

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg white until slightly thinned.

  2. Prepare this a day in advance.

Coat the fruit

  1. Dip the fruit in the egg white while still moist.

  2. Roll the fruit in powdered sugar.

  3. Place the coated fruit on a sieve to dry.

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 + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Currant + plumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Currant + grapetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together346 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Forms a thin binding coat that holds the powdered sugar to the fruit surface.
Powdered sugar
Forms a dry, sweet, crisp outer layer over the moistened fruit.
Currants
Provides tart fruit flavour and a small, firm bite under the sugar coating.
Plums
Provides juicy, tart-sweet fruit flavour under the sugar coating.
Grapes
Provides juicy, sweet fruit flavour under the sugar coating.
Cherries
Provides sweet-tart fruit flavour and a juicy centre under the sugar coating.

The step that matters

Dip the fruit while the egg white is still moist. Sugar only sticks to a damp surface. If the fruit is dry, or the egg white has dried, the powdered sugar will not adhere evenly and the coating will flake off.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, plum, grape):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, plum, grape. 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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