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Dessert

Ambrosia Salad

A chilled fruit salad of pineapple, strawberries, oranges, bananas, coconut, and sherry wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Ambrosia Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel and slice the pineapple, then cut the slices into thin strips.

  2. Hull the strawberries and cut them in halves.

  3. Peel the oranges and divide them into segments, then cut these in halves.

  4. Sprinkle all the fruit with sugar and chill on ice.

Layer and serve

  1. In a deep salad bowl, sprinkle grated coconut on the bottom.

  2. Layer the pineapple, then more coconut, followed by strawberries, oranges, and bananas, adding coconut between each layer.

  3. Top with a final layer of coconut.

  4. Pour the sherry over the fruit, combined with the juices from the fruits.

  5. Garnish with whole strawberries and thin slices of orange.

  6. Serve very cold in punch cups.

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. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Coconut + bananatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Pineapple + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

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

  4. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the main fruit body and tart sweetness that structure the salad.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture and a soft, rich texture between the fruit layers.
Strawberries
Contribute aroma, color and juicy sweetness to the fruit layers.
Oranges
Add acidity and citrus brightness that balances the sugar.
Bananas
Add creamy body and mild sweetness to the layered fruit.
Sherry wine
Adds aroma and flavor, and its juices soak through the layers.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the fruit with sugar and chilling it. Sugar draws juice out of the fruit through osmosis, creating syrup that flavors the salad. Chilling slows fruit softening and keeps the texture firm, so the layers hold together when served.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, orange, banana, sugar, sherry, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, orange, banana, sugar, sherry, wine. 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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