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Dessert

Bullaces, to Preserve

Preserve of bullaces made with powdered sugar and brandy paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Bullaces, to Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prick the fruit and place it in scalding water for 1 minute.

  2. Remove the fruit from the water and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Make the syrup

  1. The next day, pour off the syrup, boil and skim it, then pour it over the fruit.

  2. Let it stand for 1-2 days.

  3. Boil the syrup again, add the fruit, and boil together without mashing.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer the preserves into jars.

  2. Once cool, cover with brandy paper.

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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Bullaces
Provide the fruit that forms the body of the preserve.
Powdered lump sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and sweetens it, forming the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the fruit without mashing. Boiling the fruit again in the syrup must be gentle so the fruit keeps its shape. Vigorous stirring or mashing breaks down the cell walls and turns the preserve to mush.

“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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