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Dessert

Frosted Fruit

A dish of fruit coated in hot sugar and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and grape work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 346 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Frosted Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coating

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

  2. In a plate, mix the egg white with 2 teaspoons of cold water and beat until combined.

Coat and dry

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

  2. Roll the fruit in the hot sugar until fully coated.

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  3. Sugar + grapetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

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

  4. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Sugar
Forms a thin, crisp, glossy coating that hardens as it cools on the fruit.
Egg white
Acts as a sticky binder that holds the sugar to the fruit and dries into a firm shell.

The step that matters

Heating the sugar until hot but not melted. Sugar that is too cool will not stick to the fruit, while sugar heated past melting turns syrupy or caramelizes and clumps. Hot, dry sugar adheres well and hardens into a crisp coating.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, currant, egg. 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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