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Dessert

Fruit Salad or Aspic

A gelatin dessert made with pineapple, peaches, cherries, and lettuce, served with mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 168 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fruit Salad or Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Make the aspic

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in water according to package instructions.

  2. Mix in the juice from the cherries, pineapple, and peaches.

  3. Add the chopped pineapple and sliced peaches to the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold and let it congeal in the refrigerator.

  2. Serve on a bed of lettuce with mayonnaise dressing.

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 + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together168 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Peach + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Pineapple + gelatintop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Peach + gelatintop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Cherry juice
Adds liquid and fruity flavor to the gelatin base.
Chopped pineapple
Adds sweetness, tang, and chewy fruit pieces throughout the aspic.
Sliced peaches
Adds sweetness and soft fruit texture to the set aspic.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds richness and creamy tang alongside the chilled fruit.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully. Gelatin must dissolve completely in the water before the juice and fruit are added. Undissolved granules leave a gritty texture and can leave weak spots where the aspic fails to set firmly.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Beetrootfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, peach, gelatin. 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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