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Dessert

Frosted Fruit

A preserved fruit dish where fruit is coated in sugar and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 709 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Frosted Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Frost the fruit

  1. Heat the sugar on a paper near the fire or on the stove until hot but not melted.

  2. Mix the egg white with cold water and beat until combined.

  3. Dip the fruit in the egg mixture and shake off excess moisture.

  4. Roll the fruit in the sugar until fully coated.

  5. Place the coated fruit on a sieve near the fire to dry and harden.

Candy the pineapple

  1. Prepare the pineapple by peeling and slicing it into ½ inch thick pieces.

  2. In a preserving pan, boil sugar and water for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the pineapple slices and boil for 15 minutes after it starts boiling.

  4. Remove the fruit and place it on a sieve to dry for 30 minutes.

  5. Continue boiling the sugar and water until thick or it hardens on a spoon dipped in cold water.

  6. Dip the pineapple pieces in the thick syrup.

  7. Place them to dry on a sieve or buttered plate, optionally dusting with fine sugar.

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 + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Currant + pineappletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Currant + grapetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together346 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the crisp, glassy coating on the fruit and sweetens it as it hardens.
Egg white
Acts as a binding glue so the sugar sticks evenly to the fruit.
Pineapple
Provides the main fruit that is candied in boiling syrup until glossy and firm.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to the right thickness. Sugar syrup must be boiled long enough to reach the hard-crack stage, tested by dipping a spoon in cold water. Too little boiling leaves the syrup runny and the pineapple sticky; too much makes it brittle or burnt.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, sugar, egg, 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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