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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A gelatin-based fruit salad made with lemon juice, water, pineapple, bananas, oranges, plums, peaches, apricots, and optional walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add lemon juice and water to the gelatin mixture.

  3. Incorporate any juicy fruits to reach a total of 2 pints.

Add fruit and set

  1. Add grated pineapple, sliced bananas, oranges, plums, peaches, and apricots as desired.

  2. Pour the mixture into molds and place in a cool area to harden.

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. Peach + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

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

  2. Plum + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Plum + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable gel as it cools.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness of the fruit.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, pineapple, banana, orange, plum, peach, apricot. 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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Dressing 41Ambrosia 24Pineapple 21Grape 15Frozen 10Mixed 8 See all 267 →

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