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Dessert

Fruit Glace

Fruit Glace is a candied fruit dessert made by boiling fruit in a sugar and lemon syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Glace

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and lemon juice together for 30 minutes.

  2. Dip a skewer into the syrup, then into water; if the thread breaks off brittle, the syrup is ready.

  3. Avoid stirring the syrup to prevent spoiling it.

Glaze the fruit

  1. Pare and divide the oranges into eighths, wiping them free from moisture.

  2. Pour part of the syrup into a small cup and place it in a basin of boiling water.

  3. Take each piece of orange on a skewer and dip it into the syrup, then place on a lightly buttered dish.

  4. Prepare grapes and nuts in the same way.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the syrup that hardens into a brittle, glassy coating on the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps keep the syrup from turning grainy or crystallising.
Oranges
Provide the main fruit that is coated in the glaze.

The step that matters

Judging the syrup's stage. Sugar syrup must reach the hard-crack stage to set brittle when cooled. Underheated syrup stays sticky, while overcooked syrup turns bitter and dark. Avoiding stirring prevents sugar crystals from forming and spoiling the glaze.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter. 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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