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Dessert

Glace Fruit and Nuts

A candied fruit and nut confection made by boiling sugar syrup and dropping fruit and nuts into it.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Glace Fruit and Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water, sugar, and vinegar until it reaches 310°F (brittle stage).

  2. Place the mixture over boiling water.

Coat and cool

  1. Drop prepared fruit and nuts into the syrup one at a time.

  2. Lift out with a fork and cool on oiled plates.

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 + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Vinegar + nutstop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together116 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

Granulated sugar
Forms the syrup that hardens into a crisp, glassy coating around the fruit and nuts.
Vinegar
Acidity helps keep the sugar from recrystallizing, so the coating stays smooth and clear.
Fruit and nuts
The core pieces that get coated; they must be dry and slightly warm so the syrup adheres.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to 310°F. Sugar syrup must reach the hard-crack-like brittle stage to set hard at room temperature. Undercooked syrup stays sticky, while overcooked syrup turns bitter and darkens.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Soybeanfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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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