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Fruit Bouillon

A chilled or warm fruit broth made from cherries, raspberries, currants, and water, thickened with starch and served with sweet croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,168 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine cherries, raspberries, currants, and water in a pot.

  2. Boil until the fruit is very tender.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve or cheesecloth in a colander.

  4. Heat the strained liquid again and sweeten to taste.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken slightly with 1 tablespoon of corn starch or tapioca.

  2. Serve ice cold in summer or hot if desired.

  3. Add a few sweet croutons to each cup before serving.

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. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  2. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  3. Currant + corntop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour of the broth.
Raspberries
Add fruity aroma and tartness to the broth.
Currants
Add tartness and deepen the fruit flavour.
Corn starch or tapioca
Thickens the strained liquid so it becomes slightly viscous.

The step that matters

Thicken slightly with corn starch or tapioca. Starch must be heated in the liquid to swell and thicken it. Adding too much makes the broth gluey, while too little leaves it thin.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, 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.

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