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Dessert

Plum, Cherry, Pineapple and Peach Soup

A chilled soup made from plum, cherry, pineapple, and peach, sweetened and thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plum, Cherry, Pineapple and Peach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cook the fruit with water in a pot until very soft.

  2. Mash the fruit and sift to remove solids.

  3. Sweeten the mixture slightly with sugar.

  4. Thicken the soup a little with corn starch.

  5. Add lemon or orange juice for extra flavor if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup very cold with chipped ice.

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

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

  2. Cherry + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together177 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Plum + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol (fusel, malty).

  4. Pineapple + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together168 recipes

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

  5. Plum + cherrytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Mixed fruit
Provides the main body, sweetness and fruit flavor of the soup once cooked and mashed.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the soup a lightly thickened body.
Sugar
Sweetens the soup and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Lemon juice or orange juice
Adds acidity and brightens the fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup a little with corn starch. Corn starch must be heated in liquid to swell and thicken. Adding too much leaves the soup pasty or gluey, while too little leaves it thin, so add it gradually and keep the soup warm enough for the starch to set.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, cherry, pineapple, peach, corn, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, cherry, pineapple, peach, corn, 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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