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Dessert

Fruit Toast

Fruit Toast is a sweet toast topped with raisins, citrus, pineapple, cherries, and a thickened syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the fruit

  1. Simmer the sultana raisins in boiling water until tender.

  2. Drain the raisins and measure the water.

  3. If the water is less than 1 cup, add boiling water.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Return the water to the heat, then add a thickening made of cornstarch and butter.

  2. Stir in the sugar and lemon juice, then add the raisins and other fruits.

  3. When hot, pour the mixture over rounds of dainty toast and serve immediately.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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

Sultana raisins
Soften when simmered and add chewy sweetness and moisture to the topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid as its starch granules swell and set when heated.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the liquid, rounding out the flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel in the thickened mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch thickening to the hot water. Cornstarch clumps if it hits liquid unevenly. Its starch granules need to be dispersed and heated with stirring to swell evenly and thicken smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, lemon, orange, pineapple):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, lemon, orange, pineapple. 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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