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Dessert

Iced Fruit Soup

A chilled soup made from pineapple, peaches, banana, water, arrowroot, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Iced Fruit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Simmer the grated pineapple in 1 quart of water until tender.

  2. Add the peaches and banana, and cook until they can be pressed through a sieve.

  3. Add 1 quart of boiling water and 2 tablespoons of arrowroot blended in a little cold water.

  4. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  5. Add the juice of 1 lemon and enough sugar to sweeten.

Serve

  1. Serve in glass cups when ice cold.

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 + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Peach + bananatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the soup into a smooth, glossy body as it heats.
Peaches
Provide the main fruit flavor and body once cooked and pressed through a sieve.
Pineapple
Forms the flavorful base of the soup as it simmers until tender.
Banana
Adds creamy body and mild sweetness to the purée.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Blending arrowroot into cold water before adding it. Arrowroot dispersed directly into hot liquid clumps and thickens unevenly. Mixing it in cold water first lets the starch separate evenly, so it thickens smoothly when the soup is heated.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Arrowrootthe original
  4. Lettucefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, peach, banana, lemon, 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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