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Dessert

Macedoine of Fruit

A layered dessert of fruit and wine jelly set in a mold and frozen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and pear work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 223 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Macedoine of Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare wine jelly according to package instructions.

  2. Boil assorted fruits in syrup, then drain them.

Layer and freeze

  1. Fill a mold with a layer of jelly.

  2. Add a layer of fruit.

  3. Continue layering jelly and fruit until the mold is full.

  4. Place the filled mold in a mixture of salt and ice, covering it closely.

  5. Let it freeze for several hours.

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. Wine + peartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Pear + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together254 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Wine + syruptop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Wine jelly
Sets the dessert into a firm, sliceable body that holds the fruit in layers.
Assorted fruits
Provide the main flavour, colour and texture contrast within each layer.
Syrup
Sweetens the fruit and carries flavour as the fruit is boiled.

The step that matters

Covering the mold in salt and ice. Salt lowers the melting point of the ice, so the mixture gets colder than ice alone. Covering the mold closely keeps that cold in contact with it, so the dessert freezes evenly rather than slowly or unevenly.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, syrup):

  1. Pearthe original
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, syrup. 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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