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Dessert

Salad

A chilled fruit salad featuring lemon jelly, strawberries, pineapple, whipped cream, mayonnaise, and lettuce garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,559 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Prepare lemon jelly according to your favorite recipe and chill until set.

  2. Wet the mold with cold water and lightly brush with olive oil.

  3. Pour the lemon jelly into the mold and refrigerate to harden.

Prepare the fruit and cream

  1. Wash and drain the strawberries, then stem them and keep them cold.

  2. Shred the fresh pineapple, drain well, and chill.

  3. Whip the cream and mix it with the mayonnaise.

  4. Gently combine the whipped cream mixture with the berries and pineapple.

Assemble and serve

  1. Unmold the lemon jelly onto a serving dish, fill the center with the fruit mixture, and garnish with lettuce.

  2. Surround with strawberries and spoonfuls of whipped cream or cream mayonnaise.

  3. Serve immediately, optionally with thin bread and butter.

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. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pineapple + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

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

  5. Cream + lettucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon jelly
Forms the firm, sliceable base that holds the mold shape and gives the salad structure.
Strawberries
Add fresh sweetness, acidity and juiciness to the fruit filling.
Fresh pineapple
Adds bright tropical flavor and juicy texture to the fruit mixture.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and body to the whipped cream, giving it a thicker, creamier texture.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and a light, airy texture that softens the tart fruit.

The step that matters

Drain the pineapple well before mixing. Fresh pineapple releases juice that thins the cream mixture and can loosen the filling, so draining it thoroughly keeps the cream thick and the fruit mixture from becoming watery.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, cream, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, cream, lettuce. 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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