Why it works: Tarragon and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Fruit Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Chill the grapes, grapefruit, banana, and cherries thoroughly.
Make the dressing
Whip the sweet cream until very light.
Gradually add the sugar and tarragon vinegar to the whipped cream.
Assemble and serve
Arrange the fruit in a bowl with the bleached lettuce leaves.
Pour the dressing over the salad just before serving.
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.
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Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together425 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Grapefruit + lettucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together118 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Grape + bananatop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together496 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Grapefruit + tarragontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together12 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,547 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet cream
- Whipped, it forms a light, rich dressing that coats the fruit.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dressing and helps stabilise the whipped cream.
- Tarragon vinegar
- Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the cream.
The step that matters
Whipping the sweet cream until very light. Cream must be whipped to the right stage so it holds air and stays light. Over-whipping makes it grainy and it can turn to butter. Adding the vinegar and sugar gradually keeps the cream stable.
Swap the grape
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grapefruit, banana, cream, sugar, tarragon, vinegar, lettuce):
- Limefits better
- Cherryfits better
- Avocadofits better
- Grapethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against grapefruit, banana, cream, sugar, tarragon, vinegar, 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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