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French Fruit Salad

A salad of oranges, bananas, Malaga grapes, walnuts, and lettuce dressed with French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

French Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the oranges and remove the pulp from each section.

  2. Peel the bananas and cut them into ½ inch slices.

  3. Remove the skins and seeds from the grapes.

  4. Break the walnut meats into pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the prepared ingredients and arrange them on lettuce leaves.

  2. Serve with French dressing.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  3. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

  4. Grape + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Add sweetness and a soft, creamy texture to the salad.
Malaga grapes
Add juiciness and sweetness, contributing moisture to the salad.
English walnut meats
Add a crunchy texture that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Oranges
Add acidity and bright flavour, plus juice that moistens the salad.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, grape, walnut, meat, lettuce):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, grape, walnut, meat, 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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