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Dessert

Fruit Cocktail

A chilled fruit cocktail of grapefruit, pineapple, strawberries, sweetened with sherry wine, apricot brandy, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 377 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fruit Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Mix grapefruit pulp with shredded pineapple and fresh strawberries. Use half as much pineapple as grapefruit pulp.

  2. Chill thoroughly.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. To make wine dressing, mix sherry wine, apricot brandy, and sugar until dissolved.

  2. Pour over wine dressing.

  3. Serve in champagne glasses and garnish with a whole strawberry.

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 + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

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

  2. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Grapefruit + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Apricot + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the wine mixture to add sweetness that balances the sherry and brandy.
Sherry wine
Forms the liquid base of the dressing, adding acidity and wine flavour to the fruit.
Apricot brandy
Adds a concentrated fruit aroma and alcohol to the dressing.

Swap the grapefruit

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapefruitthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sherry, wine, apricot, brandy, sugar. 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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