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A Macedoine of Fruit

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

A Macedoine of Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grease the inside of a mold with oil.

  2. Decorate the bottom with dried cherries and slices of citron.

  3. Line the sides with pear jam colored with cochineal.

  4. Fill the cavity with a mixture of apple jam, quince marmalade, and a little brandy.

  5. Set the mold in ice.

  6. To serve, turn it out onto a dish and add a little perfumed cream around it.

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. Pear + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Pear + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  5. Pear + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the quince

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, apple, brandy, cream):

  1. Apricotfits better
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, apple, brandy, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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