The 10 Best Canned Fruit Cocktails On The Market

Canned fruit cocktail is one of those foods that almost everybody has in their pantry somewhere. This store-cupboard staple is one of the quickest ways to rustle up a dessert with minimal effort and to get a quick hit of fruity flavors just by opening a can. The term "fruit cocktail" has been used to describe mixtures of chopped fruits since the start of the 20th century, appearing in the cookbook "Mrs. Rorer's New Cook Book" in 1902 (per Food Timeline). While the original recipes involved alcohol, the food eventually developed to be a booze-free affair. And once the canning industry caught wind, fruit cocktails exploded in popularity, and the foodstuff became so popular that there's even a National Fruit Cocktail Day (May 13, if you're planning on celebrating).

But while the fruit cocktail is a convenient way to add fruit to a meal, it's not without its drawbacks. Its wide availability and relative cheapness means that sometimes, you can end up with a product that has cheap, mushy fruit and virtually no flavor. With so many options out there, how can you tell which ones are worth your hard-earned cash? That's something that we can help out with.

If you're going to buy a fruit cocktail, it's hard to go wrong with a product from the biggest name out there. Del Monte products line virtually every store shelf across the land, with the canned food company selling more than $4.4 billion worth of foods in 2022, per Statista. With that amount of money, you'd hope that it gets the basics, like its fruit cocktail, right — and luckily, it does. Del Monte's 100% Juice Fruit Cocktail is crammed with sliced peaches, grapes, cherries, pears, and pineapples, all bathing in a solution that's purely fruit juice and nothing more. As it's packed in fruit juice instead of syrup, this product avoids that overwhelming sweetness that some fruit cocktails can suffer from, and it contains no added sugars or preservatives.

What stands out about Del Monte's 100% Juice Fruit Cocktail is its consistent quality, which gives you a great taste every time. A large number of reviews via Walmart highlight the fruit's great flavor, as well as its ability to be used in loads of different ways. "This fruit cocktail is delicious. There are many recipes you can use these in. My favorite is mixing [it] with whip cream and ... some coconut ... Stir it up and you have a great fruit salad," says just one customer. We'd like to give that a try!

Buying a store's own-brand product can always be a little bit of a risk, especially if you're purchasing something canned, which makes it difficult to assess the quality of what's inside. Luckily, it's hard to go wrong with Market Pantry, Target's line of low-price options. These items are usually a great alternative to pricier choices from premium brands. And the Market Pantry Fruit Cocktail in 100% fruit juice is proof of this.

This fruit cocktail is all taste, without the frills. Branded with unassuming red packaging, the can contains the standard formula of cherries, peaches, pineapples, grapes, and pears that fruit cocktail lovers know so well. Target's fruit cocktail decides to dispense with packing its fruit in syrup, and instead uses a combo of peach and pear juice, resulting in a product that has no added sugars, but is still pleasingly sweet. It's the low price of this fruit cocktail that is particularly appealing to some customers who reviewed it positively, per Target, and it's proof that you don't have to spend a fortune to get a quality canned fruit item at your local store. ‌

Amongst the huge outputs of Del Monte and Dole, Libby's can seem like a bit of an underdog in the canned fruit world. But you shouldn't write it off. This company is actually a heavy hitter in the canning world, and behind its somewhat quaint, homely packaging lies a keen business sense and an eye for quality products.

And it's clear that it has put a lot of love into its fruit cocktail. Libby's Fruit Cocktail is crammed full of all of your favorite fruits, in well-balanced proportions, meaning that the mixture isn't overpowered by just one flavor. With a reasonable price point, it represents good value for money, and you can throw it into pretty much anything you want, from popping it into Jello to make a retro dessert, to eating it straight out of the bowl. Its use of pear juice concentrate instead of syrup gives it a little more lightness than other fruit cocktails, which can use large amounts of sugar. But, if you're looking for something even less sugary, Libby's also stocks a fruit cocktail made with Splenda, so you can enjoy the fruit without having to think about the impact on your blood glucose. ‌

Do you ever wish that your standard fruit cocktail were a little more interesting? Do you wish that when you opened the can, you weren't greeted with the standard mixture of peaches, pears, and grapes, and instead with something a bit more exciting and vibrant? Something tells us that food giant Dole caught on to this potential urge that some people might have. And the company's response, it's Tropical Fruit Salad, is a real winner.

This fruit salad banishes the standard formula you find in most fruit cocktails and jazzes things up with new flavors. Each can contains a combination of red and yellow papaya, guava, and pineapple chunks, which are coated in passion fruit juice. It makes for a super-sweet combination of flavors that are pretty much designed to be enjoyed in the sunshine (ideally on a sandy beach, with a gentle breeze tousling your hair). Try combining these chunks with other freshly-sliced fruits to make a zingy, fresh fruit salad. Or, as Dole suggests on its ultra-large can, you can make yourself some easy fruit parfaits or a "Tropical Coconut Pizza Pie." Honestly, we're not quite sure what that entails, but hey, we're here for it!

The best fruit cocktails are a well-balanced combination of fruits, which all have an individual chance to shine. But all too often, you can open a can of fruit cocktail, and find that it's distinctly lacking in one ingredient. This can often be the case with cherries (and we don't want to be biased here, but they're kind of the best bit), which despite being prominently displayed on the packaging of many fruit cocktails, may be nowhere to be found once you start to dig in.

So it appears that Del Monte found an opportunity to give those cherry fans what they've been craving with its Very Cherry mixed fruit. This fruit mixture promises to go big on the cherries, and while some folks have found that their individual cans are somewhat lacking in the promised ingredient (per Amazon), others seem to be more satisfied, with people generally loving the taste of this product, as well as its availability online when it's nowhere to be found in stores. It's also notable that this fruit mixture has no added sugar, leaving the fruit to shine through on its own, which it does very capably.

For such a simple food item, a fruit cocktail can pack a big punch. And it normally does this by way of its sugar content. Fruit cocktails are often packed in syrup, which operates both as a preservative and a way to keep things super-sweet inside the can. Unfortunately, this can also mean that certain fruit cocktail products are astonishingly high in added sugar, with single servings of chopped fruit mixtures also containing a large proportion of your recommended daily added sugar allowance.

Somewhere along the line, Walmart figured out that this isn't exactly music to everyone's ears. And it's Great Value No Sugar Added Fruit Cocktail will undoubtedly be a pleasing choice for folks who want to keep their sugar consumption down. This fruit cocktail is sweetened using sucralose, a low-calorie sweetener that removes a lot of its caloric impact, and as a result, the product is true to its name, with no added sugar. Luckily, this doesn't take away from its taste. The No Sugar Added Fruit Cocktail still has all the sweetness that you want from a fruit cocktail, and its combination of chopped fruits is still flavorful and carries its own distinct flavors. ‌

Look, folks. Let's be real. Fruit cocktail is delicious no matter how you buy it, whether you're going for a sugar-free version, or one packed in fruit juice. But sometimes, we just want our fruit cocktails to have that element of serious sweetness that makes them simultaneously light and indulgent. And that's exactly what Goya's Fruit Cocktail in syrup provides.

With heavy syrup enveloping the chopped fruits, there's no denying that this mixture is on the sugary side, but the advantage of this is that it works to highlight each fruit's individual taste, making the whole thing burst with flavor. The larger cans that Goya packs its fruit cocktail in also make this a product that's great for entertaining a crowd. Thanks to the sweetness of this product, we'd recommend pairing it with something relatively neutral-tasting to enjoy it, like light cream or a simple frozen yogurt. Alternatively, if you wish, you can just grab a spoon and go to town — we don't think you'll be left wanting more. ‌

Del Monte is clearly well aware of the slight paradox of some fruit cocktails: They're crammed with fruit, which is meant to be healthy, and then that nutritious fruit is packed in a heavy, sticky, sugary syrup. It kind of defeats the whole point, doesn't it?

So its No Sugar Added Fruit Cocktail, which places the fruit in water sweetened with sucralose, is a bit of a miracle for folks who prefer more fruit and less sugar. Del Monte's product takes the standard combo of cherries, pineapple, peaches, grapes, and pears, but removes any added sugars while keeping it just as flavorful. This fruit cocktail also, incredibly, manages to avoid the somewhat strange tastes that sucralose can sometimes create in food. "These are really good!" said one reviewer via Target who seemed impressed that the product didn't have an aftertaste. "In spite of what others say, the sucralose is what makes these taste so great. I prefer them to pears in heavy syrup. I'm diabetic, and these are a godsend," another satisfied customer stated, with other folks highlighting the freshness of the fruit inside, and the distinctiveness of each individual taste. ‌

Canned cocktails are an awesome way of getting a lot of fruit in one go. But how often have you opened a can of fruit cocktail, and found that the fruit pieces are completely minuscule? Food manufacturers have an unfortunate habit of serving up the smallest fruit chunks possible, and this can seriously detract from the enjoyment of eating it — let alone the fact that it's hard to taste each individual fruit.

This isn't a problem with Del Monte's Chunky Mixed Fruit, though. This fruit cocktail has taken the normally teeny pieces in a cocktail can, and has blown them up to a bigger size, making the overall experience way more satisfying. Del Monte has also covered the bases on the nutrition front, too. This fruit cocktail product is packed in fruit juice instead of syrup, and this significantly brings down its calorie count and means that it has no added sugars. Thanks to the larger piece sizes, you can enjoy this fruit cocktail straight out of the tin, or shove the chunks onto skewers for a fruit kebab.

Jego might not be as big of a name as the other kingpins of the canned fruit world, but that doesn't mean you should avoid putting its products in your shopping cart. The brand places a clear premium on making healthy, nutritious food items that are created and packed with care, and which are accessible to folks following specific diets.

And if you're after a tropical take on a fruit cocktail, then Jego's the way to go. Its Tropical Fruit Mix in syrup puts a fresh and exciting spin on a regular fruit cocktail, subbing out the standard fruits and putting in guava, papaya, and pineapple instead. This non-GMO, gluten-free fruit mixture is great for a wide range of uses, from layering into a parfait or a sundae, to making a very literal fruit cocktail, by mixing fruit juice with your favorite liquors, and skewering pieces of the tropical fruit mix on a cocktail stick as a garnish. If you don't believe us on the quality of this product, check out how much customers love it. "Both me and my wife absolutely loved this tropical fruit mix by Jego, and we both finish the entire can in almost no time after opening it," said one customer, per Amazon.