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Fruit Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine pineapple, grapes, white cherries, pecans, celery, and maraschino cherries in a large bowl.

  2. In a saucepan, boil egg yolks, sugar, butter, mustard, coarse sea salt, paprika, and vinegar together.

  3. While hot, add beaten egg whites to the mixture.

  4. Once cool, stir in port wine and fold in whipped cream gently.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Pecans + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Pineapple + pecanstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together294 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Grape + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

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

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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, grape, pecans, egg, sugar, butter, mustard):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, grape, pecans, egg, sugar, butter, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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