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Grape Fruit Salad

A chilled salad of grapefruit segments set in lemon gelatin, served with optional lettuce and a drizzle of oil mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Grapefruit and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Grape Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grapefruit

  1. Peel the grapefruit, separate the sections, and remove the membrane and pulp.

  2. Break the grapefruit into large pieces and place them in a colander to drain into a dish.

Make the gelatin

  1. Dissolve the lemon gelatin in boiling water and let it cool.

  2. Add the grapefruit juice to the gelatin mixture and pour it into a shallow pan.

  3. Once firm, cut the gelatin into 1-inch pieces.

Serve

  1. Serve the gelatin with grapefruit sections, either in the shell or on a bed of lettuce, topped with oil mayonnaise.

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. Grapefruit + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

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

  2. Grapefruit + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  4. Gelatin + lettucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together128 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + gelatintop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit
Provides the fresh, tart citrus flavour and the juice that sets into the gelatin.
Lemon gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and a creamy fat element to the topping.

The step that matters

Let the gelatin cool before adding the grapefruit juice. Gelatin needs to be cooled but still liquid so it sets evenly; very hot liquid can weaken the setting power, while a mixture that is too cold may set unevenly with the juice.

“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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