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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A fruit salad of bananas, oranges, pineapple, and strawberries dressed in a sweet syrup made from sugar, water, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 and oranges lengthwise, removing pith and seeds.

  2. Dissect the pineapple, taking the pulp from the core in small pieces with a fork.

  3. Hull and wash the strawberries.

  4. Arrange the fruit in a salad bowl, layering smaller pieces on top.

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the sugar and water for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour the syrup over the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Return to heat, stirring until slightly thickened.

  4. Cool the mixture.

  5. Add the lemon juice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the fruit.

  2. Serve thoroughly 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the syrup into a smooth, creamy dressing when gently heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and helps balance the acidity of the citrus.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that cut through the sweetness of the dressing.

The step that matters

Return to heat, stirring until slightly thickened. Egg yolks set when heated, but if they get too hot or are left unstirred they can curdle or scramble. Heat gently and keep stirring so the dressing thickens smoothly.

Swap the banana

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

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

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