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Dessert

Macédoine of Fruits

A chilled fruit mixture sweetened with syrup, brandy, and liqueur, served plain or with custard or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Macédoine of Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make the syrup by boiling 1 pint of water with 10 ounces of lump sugar for a few minutes.

  2. Flavor the syrup with 1 tablespoon of brandy and 1 tablespoon of liqueur syrup (or ½ tablespoon of pure liqueur).

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare the fruits: keep small fruits whole and slice larger fruits.

  2. Mix the fruits with the cooled syrup, ensuring they are well coated.

  3. Set the mixture on ice until ready to serve.

  4. Serve as is, or with custard, cream, or frozen cream.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Syrup + brandytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together561 recipes
  3. Syrup + curranttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together329 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Syrup
Sweetens the fruit and carries the flavour, keeping the pieces moist and glossy.
Fruits
Provide the main body, colour and natural flavour of the dish.
Brandy
Adds aromatic warmth and depth to the syrup.
Liqueur
Adds a concentrated aromatic note that complements the fruit.

The step that matters

Mix the fruits with the cooled syrup. Adding fruit to hot syrup softens it and can make it mushy and cloudy. Cooling the syrup first keeps the fruit firm and bright, and coating it well ensures even flavour and moisture.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, brandy. 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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