By Miranda Kohout
Humans have always been all-in on sweetness. Sugar equals energy, and energy means life. For most of the world, though, sugar is relatively new. Prior to colonization and the introduction of honeybees and sugarcane, indigenous Americans looked to maple sugar to add a touch of sweetness to their foods. Similarly, lacking access to sugarcane, residents of Iceland and other Nordic countries found that licorice root provided sought-after sweetness. Fruit has always been an attractive source of natural sugar. An explosion of color and flavor, coupled with life-giving sweetness, fruits have offered both nutrition and inspiration for generations of cooks. Learning to make the most of peak produce is at the root of great pastry.
Ripe for Inspiration
The experience of eating a perfectly ripe pear, peach or mango can only be described as transcendent. Many of us end up in the kitchen because we want to share some part of this experience with others. The first step is to choose ripe fruit.
What is Ripeness?
With few exceptions, the fruit of a plant is its means of enticing other creatures to spread its genetic material. When a fruit’s seeds are capable of germination, and only at this time, the plant puts every bit of its energy into making that fruit as appealing as possible. As fruit ripens, it softens, sweetens, grows less acidic and astringent, and becomes more aromatic. Many fruits will also develop color or deepen in color as chlorophyll in the fruit decreases.
Beware: even when a fruit exhibits some hallmarks of ripeness, it may not have been picked at its peak. Many fruits will continue to soften once picked, whether they were ripe at the time or not. Color can be forced using ripening gases such as ethylene. The most reliable indicator of ripeness is aroma. While some desirable properties will continue to develop post-harvest in many fruits, aroma is not one of them.
Climacteric vs Non-Climacteric Fruits
Provided a fruit has reached its full intended size and shape before harvest, climacteric fruits will continue to ripen after picking. Climacteric fruits include apples, avocados, kiwis, mangos, bananas, plums and tomatoes.
Non-climacteric fruits will not ripen after picking. They may improve in texture or color, but they will not grow any sweeter or more flavorful. Among non-climacteric fruits are cherries, oranges, pineapples, loquats, strawberries and watermelons. If these fruits are harvested before they are ripe, they will never achieve their true flavor potential.
When selecting fruits from the “climacteric” list, feel free to afford some leeway. The fruit may well improve and ripen with time. Unripe climacteric fruits will not improve substantially and should be avoided. Any fruit picked before it is fully mature will never achieve peak ripeness.
Fruit Flavor and Flavor Pairing
Fruits offer the pastry chef so much more than sweetness. Each fruit, and even each variety of fruit, offers a unique flavor experience. While we may hold a general “classic” flavor of a given fruit in our imaginations, in truth, a fruit’s flavor is complex and layered. When seeking to enhance and complement peak produce, you should explore the origins of the produce. Several chemical compounds give fruits their classic taste and aroma; among them are terpenes, esters, acids and tannins.
Terpenes
For the purposes of our discussion here, terpenes are compounds present mostly in plants that contribute flavor and aroma. For example, the bracing smell of fresh lemon is largely from limonene. When you get a whiff of citrus, it’s because the volatile limonene contained in the fruit’s skin has evaporated and traveled to your nose, resulting in a classic citrus aroma.
Many different terpenes play a role in any given fruit’s flavor and aroma. A standard blueberry will contain linalool, alpha pinene and caryophyllene, to name a few. Linalool is floral and is prevalent in lavender; alpha pinene, as the name implies, is fresh and forest-y; caryophyllene adds notes of black pepper and cinnamon.
Esters
As we did with terpenes, we will simplify the deep science of esters to focus on their role in our kitchens. For plants, esters can attract pollinators or repel pests. For us, esters are another group of compounds that give plants flavor and aroma. Isoamyl acetate is the ester that contributes the bulk of a banana’s aroma. Methyl salicylate can be found in many fruits and herbs; your palate will detect it as wintergreen. Esters such as lactones are responsible for the creamy, fruity notes found in coconut.
Other Flavor Contributors
Acids and tannins also play a role in our perception of a fruit’s flavor, and some are notable in specific fruits. Green apples, for example, get some of their signature flavor from malic acid. Citric acid is found not only in citrus fruits but in blackberries, apricots and cherries. Tannins lend bitter notes and astringency to cranberries, grapes and pomegranates.
Flavor Pairing with Fruit
While there are many approaches to pairing different ingredients with fruit to create a complete experience, one place to start is with compounds such as esters and terpenes.
The complex flavor of lychee can be broken down into its different contributing terpenes: rose oxide, linalool, and geraniol. Linalool also contributes to the flavor of blackberries and is heavily present in thyme. You’ll find rose oxide in roses and Gewürztraminer. Geraniol is present in both roses and lychees. Esters such as geranyl acetate give lychees their characteristic herbaceous flavor and aroma. That can also be found in roses, geranium, carrot seed and lemon.
We know from Pierre Hermé’s now-classic combination of raspberry, rose and lychee that lychee and rose are a fantastic match, which makes sense when we see their shared flavor compounds. Would blueberries and spruce tips be a tasty combination? Could lychee-blackberry-carrot seed become a new classic? Shared flavor compounds are a good place to begin your explorations.
To Cook or Not to Cook?
Some divide pastry chefs into two camps: those who encounter a perfect piece of ripe fruit and feel anything they could do would only be a distraction, and those who delight in helping a given fruit achieve unimagined heights through ingredients and technique. Handed a specific fruit or asked on a specific day, a chef may fall anywhere between these two poles at any given time.
To understand how to process a fruit, consider that many of its delicate flavor compounds are volatile and cannot withstand heat. Every vanilla note or floral nuance of a pawpaw vanishes when the fruit is heated. Bananas and pineapples can be delicious when cooked, but there’s no denying they differ greatly from raw, fresh versions. However, cooking concentrates a fruit’s prevalent flavors by evaporating water, and this is often desirable, whether to increase the impact of a ripe fruit’s flavor or help not-quite-great fruit develop flavor.
Cooking will alter the texture of fruit, usually breaking it down and causing it to lose its shape and structure — apples to a lesser degree, grapes and strawberries to an extreme. If one wishes to preserve the shape or crunch of a fruit, you should take care when cooking it. The sous-vide method is a brilliant way to infuse fruit with flavor and preserve its toothsome texture.
Ingredient Interactions
To ensure the best possible results when cooking with fruit, be mindful of adding sugar. Cooking a fruit will concentrate its natural sugars, making it sweeter, and additional sugar may not be necessary. Similarly, some fruits are naturally acidic, which can affect the dairy in a recipe or require adjustments to leaveners.
Fats, particularly animal fats, can mask flavor even though some flavor compounds are fat-soluble. Vegan and dairy-free preparations may be more than an accommodation made for particular guests; they can offer a route to a better, more flavorful product.
Several fruits contain enzymes that affect gelling by weakening pectin or consuming proteins such as those in gelatin. Protein-destroying enzymes may also impact the dairy in a recipe, causing it to curdle. Kiwis, figs and pineapples are just a few of the fruits that contain enzymes to be aware of. In all cases, heat will destroy the offending enzymes, so cooking these fruits is the first step to successful preparations.
Fruit Purées
The advent of prepared, frozen fruit purées heralded a new world of options for chefs. For many, the processed version of a given fruit is the only one readily available. Puréeing and then freezing fresh fruit in-house is a good way to preserve the season’s peak offerings and keep good produce from going to waste.
When you’re considering a fruit purée for a recipe, it is paramount to gather some basic information. Solid content, sugar content (Brix), added sugar, pH, natural pectin content, fat, and other added ingredients can all affect a recipe’s outcome. These details are also crucial for balancing sorbet and ice cream recipes and determining the shelf life of a ganache made with purée.
The brix, pH, amount of fiber and any added ingredients will be available on the purée’s technical data sheet, available from the manufacturer or distributor. You will not find information regarding a purée’s pectin content on the label, so it is helpful to familiarize yourself with the general pectin content of common fruits. For house-made purées, sugar content can be determined with a refractometer, and you can determine the acidity by using a pH meter.
Solid content is, in a nutshell, everything that is not water. Fiber and both naturally occurring and added sugar make up the bulk of a fruit’s solid content. Trace amounts of vitamins and minerals are negligible, but technically included. Knowing the solid content of a purée is useful mainly for formulating sorbets; resources on frozen desserts often provide general guidelines for the solid content of common fruits.
Both house-made and large-scale purées have their advantages. Chefs opting to create their purées in-house often do so to take advantage of local varieties or to support area producers. A direct line to the fruit grower can also offer some control over fruit varieties and ripeness. Depending on several factors, house-made purée may offer some cost savings. However, many chefs find house-made purées problematic, not only because of the labor involved, but also because of the lack of consistency from batch to batch. Purchased purées offer reliable, consistent flavor, and all the pertinent technical information is readily available. They also offer year-round access to peak fruit. A clever chef will pick and choose when possible. Purchasing purées to take advantage of their best attributes and processing some purées in-house when doing so offers the opportunity to create something unique and special.
(This article appeared in the Spring 2026 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)
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