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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A fruit salad with apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, pineapple, walnuts, lettuce, and a creamy dressing of egg yolks, mustard, vinegar, butter, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Prepare

  1. Cut the fruit into generous pieces.

  2. Serve the fruit on a bed of lettuce.

Make the dressing

  1. In a double boiler, combine egg yolks, salt, mustard, vinegar, and melted butter.

  2. Stir the mixture until it begins to thicken.

Finish

  1. When ready to serve, fold in the whipped cream.

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. Apple + grapetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  4. Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Grape + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they gently set and bind the butter into a smooth sauce.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a creamy texture when folded into the dressing.

The step that matters

Stirring the dressing over the double boiler. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the water is too hot or the mixture is not stirred, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, orange, banana, grape, pineapple, walnut, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, orange, banana, grape, pineapple, walnut, egg. 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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