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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A fruit salad with a buttery, sugared dressing made from egg yolks, butter, flour, sugar, boiling water, vinegar, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and banana 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 the fruit

  1. Chop the dates, figs, nuts, cherries, white grapes, pineapple, oranges, and bananas into bite-sized pieces.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, cream together the egg yolks, butter, flour, and sugar.

  2. Gradually add the boiling water to the mixture, stirring continuously.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a double boiler and cook until cool.

  4. Once cool, stir in the vinegar and lemon extract.

Combine

  1. Pour the dressing over the chopped fruits and mix well.

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 + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Fig + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Fig + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  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 and add richness as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing a smooth body.
Flour
Helps thicken the dressing as it cooks with the liquid.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the vinegar's acidity.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet fruit and dressing.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing in the double boiler. Egg yolks thicken gently at moderate heat. Overheating can curdle or scramble them, so cook slowly over simmering water and stir to keep the dressing smooth.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, fig, grape, pineapple, orange, banana, 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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