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Dessert

Crystallized Fruits

A sweet treat made by coating fruit in egg white and powdered sugar, then baking until the coating hardens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,771 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Crystallized Fruits

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coating

  1. Beat the egg white until frothy.

Coat the fruit

  1. Dip the fruit into the egg white.

  2. Coat the fruit with powdered sugar.

Set and store

  1. Place the fruit on a pan lined with parchment paper.

  2. Set the pan in a cool oven until the icing firms.

  3. Transfer the fruit to a plate and store in a cool place.

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. Grape + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

  2. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

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

  5. Grape + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Binds the powdered sugar to the fruit and forms a thin glossy icing layer.
Powdered sugar
Forms a sweet, crisp icing coating that firms as it dries.
Grapes
Provide the fruit base that the icing coats.
Orange slices
Provide the fruit base that the icing coats.
Strawberries
Provide the fruit base that the icing coats.
Cherries
Provide the fruit base that the icing coats.

The step that matters

Set the pan in a cool oven until the icing firms. Gentle heat dries the egg white and sugar coating without melting or browning it. Too much heat can make the icing sticky or cause it to run, so watch until it is firm to the touch.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, egg, 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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