Skip to main content
Salad

Fruit Salad

A mixed fruit salad with grapes, walnuts, celery, oranges, bananas, lemon juice, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the grapes and set them on ice while preparing the rest.

  2. Break the walnuts into small pieces.

  3. Line a salad bowl with crisp lettuce.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the grapes, walnuts, celery, oranges, and bananas by tossing lightly.

  2. Squeeze the lemon juice over the salad and top with mayonnaise dressing.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Grape + bananatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Add soft sweetness and a creamy texture to the salad.
Oranges
Add sweetness and bright acidity that balances the rich dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and slows browning of cut fruit.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess that moistens and binds the fruit and nuts.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, slightly bitter flavor against the soft fruit.

The step that matters

Squeeze the lemon juice over the salad and top with mayonnaise dressing.. Sliced bananas and oranges darken quickly when exposed to air. Acid from the lemon juice slows this browning, so it should be added promptly after the fruit is cut and mixed.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grape, walnut, celery, orange, lemon, lettuce):

  1. Cranberryfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, walnut, celery, orange, lemon, 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.

More fruit salad recipes

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

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes