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Dessert

Fruit Paste

A sweet preserve made from raisins, dates, figs, and nuts mixed with confectioners' sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and fig work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 318 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Fruit Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the raisins, dates, figs, and nuts in a food chopper twice.

  2. Mix with enough confectioners' sugar to form a dough that can be rolled out.

  3. Knead the dough as you would bread.

Shape and store

  1. Roll out to ½ inch thick and cut into squares.

  2. Cover with more confectioners' sugar and store in tin boxes lined with waxed 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. Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Fig + mixed nutstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  4. Dates + mixed nutstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Raisin + mixed nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture, helping bind the chopped fruit and nuts into a dough.
Dates
Provide natural sweetness and a sticky texture that helps hold the paste together.
Figs
Contribute sweetness, moisture, and chewy body to the paste.
Mixed nuts
Add fat, crunch, and body that keeps the paste from being uniformly sticky.
Confectioners' sugar
Absorbs moisture from the fruit and nuts so the mixture becomes a rollable dough.

The step that matters

Adding the confectioners' sugar. Too little sugar leaves the mixture too sticky to roll, while too much makes it dry and crumbly. Add it gradually until the dough holds together and can be rolled out.

Swap the mixed nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, dates, fig, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Mixed nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, dates, fig, 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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