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Glazed and Candied Fruits

A preservation method of fruit in sugar syrup, then sealed in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Glazed and Candied Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Prepare a syrup with sugar that measures 38° on the saccharometer.

  2. Blanch the fruit until soft to allow sugar penetration.

Soak and boil

  1. Combine fruit with 28° syrup and let it sit for 2 days.

  2. Heat the syrup to 32° and add the fruit, then boil together.

  3. The next day, concentrate the syrup to 38° and heat the fruit again.

Jar and seal

  1. Place the mixture in dry jars, cover with paper soaked in spirit, and seal.

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. Apricot + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apricot + spirittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sugar concentration in the syrup preserves the fruit and sweetens it as it soaks in.
Raw fruit
The fruit is the main ingredient that absorbs the syrup and becomes candied.

The step that matters

Concentrating the syrup in stages. Raising the syrup's sugar concentration gradually lets sugar penetrate the fruit without shrinking or toughening it. Moving too quickly to a strong syrup can draw out water and leave the fruit tough or wrinkled.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apricot, spirit. 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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