Skip to main content

Fruit Candy

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Fruit Candy

Why it works: Mixed nuts and fig share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fruit Candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the raisins, figs, and citron together.

  2. Chop the nuts, but not too fine.

  3. Wash and dry the currants.

  4. Boil the molasses and sugar together until it hardens in cold water.

  5. Remove from the stove, stir in the butter, fruit, and nuts.

  6. Pour the mixture thick into buttered pans.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Mixed nuts + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + mixed nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Butter + figtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,042 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the mixed nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, butter, fig):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Mixed nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, butter, fig. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More candied fruit recipes

and Nuts 4 See all 29 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes