Cooking with Pâte de Fruit: The Uses That Earn Their Place

The obvious home for pâtes de fruits is a small plate beside the coffee, and it is a fine one. The same cubes can also go into a cake, onto a cheese board, into a bowl of ice cream and onto a cocktail pick. Each of those works for one reason, and it is the same reason a pâte de fruit will not melt into a sauce. The set decides the job. This piece is the method, built on what a pectin gel at about 75 percent dissolved solids does under heat, cold and a knife. The confection itself, its Auvergne history and how it is made are covered in the pâte de fruit complete guide.

Read the set first

A professional formula such as Louis François's cooks fruit purée with sugar and glucose syrup until the mixture reaches about 75° Brix, which means about 75 percent dissolved solids. Louis François gives 75° Brix, approximately 108°C, as the point to add the acid and pour. The gel in that formula is yellow pectin, a high-methoxyl pectin whose setting is slowed by buffering salts. Louis François says it needs more than 72° Brix and a pH below 3.5 to set. The raspberry pâte de fruit recipe uses the same yellow pectin and the same 75° Brix target at home scale.

What matters for the kitchen is what the suppliers say that gel does afterward. Sosa calls yellow pectin thermo-irreversible, meaning that "once it gels, it cannot be liquefied again with heat," and lists bakeable fillings, fruit pastes and high resistance to freezing among its uses and properties. 100%Chef calls it thermostable, notes that it "can be baked" and "also be frozen," and sells it for fruit pastes and for bakeable fillings in pastry. Gelatin is the opposite. Gelita, a gelatin maker, describes it as thermo-reversible and notes that, "unlike agar or pectin, gelatine melts at body temperature."

Taken together, those sources describe a fruit that behaves like a solid. By the suppliers' descriptions, a pâte de fruit set this way can be cut, baked and frozen and stay a pâte de fruit. What it does not do is melt back into liquid, and every use below follows from that.

Job one: dice it and bake it

Here the heat-stable set earns its place. Cut the cubes into dice of about 1 cm with a knife wiped with a little oil between cuts, as for the slab in the raspberry recipe. Toss the dice in a spoonful of the cake's own flour so they do not clump, and fold them into the batter last. They can go into an almond loaf cake, muffins or scones, and because the suppliers describe the set as bakeable, the dice should come out as soft pockets of fruit that keep their cut shape.

Keep them inside the batter. The Exploratorium's guide to cooked sugar puts caramelization at 338°F and the start of burning above about 350°F. A cake baked at 350°F shares that figure, and a pâte de fruit is about three-quarters dissolved solids, most of it sugar. Buried in a batter, the dice are insulated by what surrounds them. Scattered on top, they face the full heat of the oven, and the sugar coating may scorch. For a finish on top, add fresh-cut dice after the cake comes out.

The sugar math. At 75° Brix, 100 g of diced pâte de fruit carries about 75 g of dissolved solids, mostly sugar, plus whatever sugar coating clings to it. The pockets are meant to be sweet, so leaving the batter alone is reasonable. For a less sweet cake, one reasonable adjustment is to take about 25 g off the batter's sugar per 100 g of dice.

Job two: slice it for the cheese board

Sosa describes the pectin set in fruit pastes as a structure that cuts easily into small cubes or strips, and that is what the cheese board asks for. The membrillo and Manchego toasts recipe shows the model: a firm fruit paste sliced beside a firm cheese. A pâte de fruit does the same work at a smaller scale. Cut each cube into two or three thin slices, so the fruit reaches the palate in the same bite as the cheese rather than as a separate sweet. The pâte de fruit complete guide suggests apricot and pear beside an aged sheep's cheese or a blue. Serve both at room temperature.

Job three: fold it into something cold

Sosa lists high freezing resistance for yellow pectin, and 100%Chef says it can be frozen. With about three-quarters of the cube already dissolved solids, most of it sugar, there is relatively little free water to freeze. Diced pâte de fruit folded into softened vanilla ice cream, then refrozen, should stay softer and chewier than fresh fruit, which is mostly water. The same dice scattered over thick yogurt or a plain panna cotta add fruit and a little chew without any cooking.

Job four: the glass and the coffee plate

A small round piece threaded on a cocktail pick garnishes a glass of sparkling wine or a spritz, and the pâte de fruit complete guide suggests dropping a piece straight into a glass of sparkling wine. A single cube on the saucer beside an espresso is the most familiar job of all. Pâte de fruit can share a plate of after-dinner sweets with a piece of Breton salted-butter caramel, the sweet covered in the Brittany food guide. For whole desserts made without an oven, see the dessert without baking guide.

What it will not do: melt into a glaze

The same property that makes a pâte de fruit bakeable means warming it in a pan will not return it to a smooth, pourable sauce. For glazes, Louis François sells NH pectin, a thermoreversible pectin "specifically designed for glazes that contain fruit pulp." At home, a jar of jam or preserves does that job, as the jam and preserves guide explains. A candy that melts and sets again is a gelatin gummy, covered in the gummy candy guide.

Set, behavior, job

The boxes for the job

According to the house's own history, François Doucet has made pâtes de fruits in Oraison, in Haute-Provence, since the early 1970s, and its first glazed fruit pastes, in 1972, were shaped as apricots and pears. The house's pâtes de fruits assortment is the box to cut for the cake, the cheese board and the coffee plate (shop the Doucet pâtes de fruits assortment). The round pieces in the marbles box, three pâtes de fruits in apricot, raspberry and blueberry plus a lavender honey jelly (shop the Doucet pâte de fruit marbles), are the size and shape for a cocktail pick. The house and its labels are covered in the François Doucet producer guide.

Once cut, the faces of a cube are bare and sticky. Roll leftover dice in a little granulated sugar and keep them in a closed tin in a cool, dry cupboard, not the refrigerator, where cold and damp make the sugar weep. Louis François's recipe leaves sugared pieces on a rack for at least 48 hours so they dry slightly; a fresh roll in sugar coats the cut faces again.

The Ambrosian Pantry is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and products ship across the continental U.S. from theambrosianpantry.com. Visitors can ask staff questions in the shop.

Sources & Further Reading

• Sosa: Yellow Pectin, technical properties
• 100%Chef: Yellow Pectin, uses and dosage
• Louis François: Les pectines, yellow and NH pectin
• Louis François: Pâte de fruit fraise et basilic, 75° Brix and drying
• Gelita: Properties of gelatin
• Exploratorium, Science of Cooking: the stages of cooked sugar
• François Doucet Confiseur: Notre histoire
• François Doucet Confiseur: Billes gourmandes de pâtes de fruits
• The Pantry Dispatch: Pâte de Fruit, The Complete Guide
• The Pantry Kitchen: Raspberry Pâte de Fruit, and the Temperature That Sets It