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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A fruit salad with bananas, oranges, coconut, cherries, nuts, and a lemon‑almond dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Assemble

  1. Partly fill a glass with sliced bananas and oranges.

  2. Garnish with shredded coconut, cherries, and nuts.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine lemon juice, sugar, almond extract, and water.

  2. Stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Let the dressing cool, then pour it over the salad.

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. Banana + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Coconut + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Nuts + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and helps create a syrupy base for the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and slows browning of the cut fruit.
Bananas
Provide soft, sweet fruit texture that forms the body of the salad.
Oranges
Add juicy sweetness and acidity along with bright citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Heating gently dissolves the sugar fully without boiling, so the dressing becomes smooth and clear rather than grainy or syrupy-thick.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, orange, coconut, lemon, sugar, almond):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, orange, coconut, lemon, sugar, almond. 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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