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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A chilled fruit salad with banana, pineapple, apricots, raspberries, topped with a sweet cream and syrup dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Boil water and sugar for 5 minutes, then cool.

  2. Beat the egg yolk until thick and creamy.

  3. Mix in the cream, then add the cooled syrup and juice from the prepared fruit.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the banana, pineapple, apricots, and raspberries in a pyramid shape.

  2. Pour the dressing evenly over the fruit.

  3. Serve in a glass dish, garnished with grape leaves underneath.

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. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Banana + apricottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate (fruity).

  4. Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Apricot + grapetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together477 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the dressing, giving it a creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the dressing taste balanced against the tart fruit.
Thick sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the dressing's texture.
Raspberries
Add tartness and aroma, brightening the sweet dressing.

The step that matters

Beat the egg yolk until thick and creamy. Egg yolk must be beaten well so it thickens smoothly and blends evenly with the cream and syrup. Under-beaten yolk leaves the dressing thin and uneven, while overheating or curdling is avoided by keeping the cooled syrup separate until it is added.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Grapethe original

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

More fruit salad recipes

Dressing 41Ambrosia 24Pineapple 21Grape 15Frozen 10Mixed 8 See all 267 →

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