Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cheese

A sweet fruit mixture bound with nuts, served as confectionery or for cracker sandwiches.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Fig and dates work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 318 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Fruit Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the figs, dates, and raisins using a meat chopper.

  2. Mix the chopped fruits with walnut meats, Castile nuts, and blanched almonds.

  3. If the mixture seems dry, add a little lemon juice or other fruit juice.

Pack and serve

  1. Pack the mixture into jelly jars.

  2. Serve as confectionery or for cracker sandwiches.

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. Fig + datestop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide natural sweetness and a soft, sticky body that binds the mixture together.
Dates
Add sweetness and moisture, helping the fruit mass hold its shape.
Walnut meats
Add fat and crunch, giving the cheese texture against the soft fruit.
Blanched almonds
Add crunch and fat, adding texture to the dense fruit mixture.

The step that matters

Adding juice only if the mixture is dry. Fruit juice adds moisture and loosens a stiff mixture so it packs evenly. Adding too much makes the mass wet and loose, so add it a little at a time and check the texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, dates, raisin, walnut, meat, nuts, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, dates, raisin, walnut, meat, nuts, almond. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes