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Dessert

Jellied Fruit Salad

A chilled fruit salad set in a gelatinous lemon or orange base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Jellied Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soften the gelatin in cold water.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix lemon juice, sugar, salt, and boiling water in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and add the softened gelatin.

  3. Cool the mixture, and when it begins to thicken, add the fruit cut into pieces.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until firm.

  2. Turn out onto a platter and serve with mayonnaise or cooked 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together533 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Lemon or orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the citrus juice.
Fruit
Provides flavor, color, and texture suspended in the set gelatin.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the fruit. Fresh pineapple contains enzymes that break down gelatin and stop it from setting. Adding fruit only when the mixture begins to thicken lets the gelatin set around the pieces rather than stay loose.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (gelatin, lemon, sugar, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, lemon, sugar, pepper. 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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