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Dessert

Cream Fruit Salad

A chilled fruit salad mixed with a mayonnaise and whipped cream dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and dates work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Cream Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain and seed the cherries.

  2. Cut the marshmallows into pieces.

Make the dressing

  1. Mix the whipped cream with the mayonnaise.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill the cherries, pineapple, dates, marshmallows, and nut meats thoroughly.

  2. Just before serving, add the dressing to the chilled fruits and nuts.

  3. Serve on a lettuce leaf.

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 + datestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Meat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,248 recipes

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

  3. Pineapple + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Dates + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Meat + datestop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, creamy body to the dressing.
Mayonnaise
Gives the whipped cream a tangy, thicker dressing with added fat.
Marshmallows
Add soft, chewy sweetness that contrasts with the crisp fruit and nuts.

The step that matters

Add the dressing just before serving. Whipped cream is an emulsion of fat and air that loses volume and weeps liquid over time. Adding it at the last moment keeps the dressing thick and stops the fruit from releasing juices that thin it.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pineapple, cream):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pineapple, cream. 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.

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