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Dessert

French Preserved Fruit

A preserved fruit mixture of assorted fruits, sugar, alcohol, and salicylic acid, stored for months and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,664 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

French Preserved Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix alcohol and salicylic acid in a large earthen jar.

  2. Cut fruits into small dice-shaped pieces.

  3. Add equal weight of sugar to the fruit, reducing sugar towards the end.

Preserve

  1. Stir the mixture gently every day with a wooden spoon.

  2. Leave the fruit in the jar for 5 to 6 months.

Bottle and serve

  1. Transfer to glass jars and seal.

  2. Serve in sherbet glasses with whipped 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. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and sweetens it, helping preserve the fruit in syrup.
Alcohol
Inhibits microbial growth, helping keep the fruit from spoiling during long storage.
Fruit
Provides the flavor, color, and texture of the preserve.

The step that matters

Reducing sugar towards the end. Sugar is the main preservative and sweetener here, and the fruit is later shifted to other containers. Adding the sugar in stages helps the fruit absorb it gradually without shrinking or toughening, while still building enough sugar to keep the fruit stable over months.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar. 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.

More preserved fruit recipes

for Tarts 19in Bottles 17Tart 8Pudding 5Dumplings 4in Syrup 4 See all 18 →

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