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Dessert

Fruit Salad Dressing

A sweet dressing made with sugar, maraschino liqueur, Champagne, and sherry, poured over fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Champagne and sherry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 61 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the sugar, maraschino, Champagne (if using), and sherry in a bowl.

  2. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Pour the dressing over the fruit.

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. Champagne + sherrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + champagnetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and dissolves into the liquid to balance the wine and liqueur.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds a sweet, cherry-like aroma and flavor to the dressing.
Sherry
Makes up most of the liquid and adds wine flavor and acidity.

The step that matters

Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Undissolved sugar stays gritty and settles at the bottom of the bowl, so the dressing tastes unevenly sweet. Stirring until clear distributes the sugar through the liquid.

“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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