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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A mixed fruit salad with oranges, bananas, grapes, pineapple, walnuts, and optional wine dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the oranges in half crosswise and reserve the peels as salad cups.

  2. Remove the pulp from each section of the oranges.

  3. Remove skins and seeds from the grapes.

  4. Mix the orange pulp, grapes, and pineapple in a bowl.

  5. Sprinkle with sugar and add lemon juice; let stand in a cool place for several hours.

Assemble and serve

  1. Before serving, slice the bananas and add them along with the walnut meats.

  2. Fill the orange shells with the fruit mixture.

  3. If desired, add ¼ cup of wine or prepare a wine dressing by mixing ½ cup of sugar, ⅓ cup of sherry wine, and 2 tablespoons of Madeira wine.

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 + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Grape + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  5. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Their pulp provides the main juicy body, and their peels serve as edible salad cups.
Bananas
Add soft, sweet body to the salad and are sliced just before serving to limit browning.
Malaga grapes
Supply juiciness and sweetness to the fruit mixture.
English walnut meats
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit and helps slow browning of cut fruit.

The step that matters

Letting the fruit stand with sugar and lemon juice. Sugar draws juice out of the fruit and forms a syrup, while lemon juice's acid brightens flavor and slows browning. Standing in a cool place for several hours lets the flavors blend without the fruit spoiling.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, banana, grape, pineapple, walnut, meat):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, banana, grape, pineapple, walnut, meat. 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.

More fruit salad recipes

Dressing 41Ambrosia 24Pineapple 21Grape 15Frozen 10Mixed 8 See all 267 →

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