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Dessert

To Frost Fruit

Fruit coated in beaten egg whites and powdered sugar, then cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Frost Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Select the finest plums, cherries, apricots, grapes, or small pears, leaving them on their stalks.

  2. Whisk the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  3. Dip the fruit in the beaten egg whites, leaving the stalks out.

Frost and dry

  1. Lift each piece of fruit one at a time and cover with finely powdered sugar.

  2. Cover a tray with white paper and lay the fruit on it.

  3. Place the tray in a cooling oven until the icing becomes firm.

Store

  1. Pack the fruit and store it 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. Plum + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

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

  2. Plum + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Apricot + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Grape + peartop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Apricot + grapetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together477 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Form a thin, glossy coating that the powdered sugar sticks to.
Finely powdered sugar
Forms a crisp, white icing that sets as the coating dries.

The step that matters

Drying the frosted fruit in the oven. Egg white must be whisked to a stiff froth and the oven kept cool so the icing sets firm and dry without browning or weeping. Heat that is too high can brown or cook the coating unevenly.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, apricot, pear, 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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