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Glace Grapes and Oranges Covered with Spun Sugar

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Grape and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,412 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Glace Grapes and Oranges Covered with Spun Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the grapes and let them dry completely.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water, and boil until it reaches the candy stage.

  3. Remove from heat and add a few drops of lemon juice, vinegar, or cream of tartar to prevent graining.

  4. Using pincers, dip each grape by the small stem into the hot sugar until fully coated.

  5. Place each coated grape separately on an oiled slab to dry.

  6. Ensure the work is done in dry conditions to prevent sugar from draining off.

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. Grape + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grape, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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