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Dessert

Fruit Dessert

A gelatin dessert with fruit pieces and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water.

Make the mixture

  1. Add lemon juice, sugar, and boiling water; stir until well dissolved and strain.

Set and serve

  1. When the mixture is partly set, pour it over the cut fruit.

  2. Serve cold with whipped cream.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable gel as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sweet gel.
Oranges
Contribute fruit pieces, juice and aroma to the set dessert.
Pineapple
Adds fruit pieces and tangy flavour to the set dessert.
Bananas
Add soft fruit pieces and mild sweetness to the set dessert.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture when it is partly set. If the gelatine is still fully liquid, the fruit sinks and floats unevenly. If it has set firm, the layers will not bind to the fruit. Partly set gel suspends the pieces evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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