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Dessert

Fruit Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made from milk, butter, flour, and cream, mixed with fruit and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fruit Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine warmed milk, melted butter, flour, salt, red pepper, and sugar.

  2. Cook over medium heat until thick, then let cool.

Finish and serve

  1. In another bowl, heat the cream.

  2. Add the cooled dressing to the cream and beat well.

  3. Mix the dressing with assorted fruits.

  4. Top with whipped cream for garnish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, thick base for the dressing.
Cream
Adds richness and a light, creamy texture to the finished dressing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into the dressing.

The step that matters

Cook until thick, then cool fully before adding the cream. Flour thickens only when the mixture is heated enough to swell its starch. Adding the dressing to hot cream could thin or curdle it, so it should cool first.

“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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