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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A chilled fruit salad with bananas, oranges, pineapple, and a lemony egg yolk dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Peel and slice the bananas using a silver knife.

  2. Peel the oranges and cut them into thin slices.

  3. Peel and remove the eyes from the pineapple, then cut it into small bits.

  4. Arrange the fruit in a dish.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and salt, beating until dissolved. Add the lemon juice and beat again.

Finish and chill

  1. Pour the dressing over the fruit and keep on ice until chilled.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  5. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the bulk and soft sweet body of the fruit salad.
Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing and give it a smooth, rich body when beaten.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dressing and dissolves smoothly into the beaten yolks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Beating the powdered sugar into the yolks. Adding sugar gradually while beating lets it dissolve fully, so the dressing stays smooth rather than grainy. Beating the yolks until very light first incorporates air and helps the dressing set lightly.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, pineapple, egg, sugar, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, pineapple, egg, sugar, lemon. 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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