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Salad

Salad

A chilled fruit salad of strawberries, pineapple, and lemon jelly, mixed with mayonnaise and whipped cream, served with lettuce and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,559 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make the lemon jelly and set it in the refrigerator to harden.

  2. Wash and drain the strawberries thoroughly. Stem the strawberries. Chill the strawberries.

  3. Shred the pineapple. Drain the pineapple well. Chill the pineapple.

  4. Whip the cream.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the whipped cream carefully with the mayonnaise.

  2. Combine the fruit mixture with the mayonnaise and cream using a fork.

  3. Turn the lemon jelly mold onto a serving dish.

  4. Fill the center of the mold with the fruit mixture.

  5. Garnish with lettuce and strawberries.

  6. Serve immediately with thin bread and butter.

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. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  4. Pineapple + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

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

  5. Cream + lettucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon jelly
Sets into a firm mold that holds the fruit salad's shape when turned out.
Strawberries
Provide fruit flavor, color and juicy texture to the salad.
Pineapple
Adds sweet, tangy fruit flavor and juicy texture to the filling.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and creamy body that binds the fruit into a dressing.
Whipped cream
Lightens the dressing with air and fat, giving a soft, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Drain the pineapple and strawberries well before combining. Excess water thins the mayonnaise and cream dressing and makes it runny, so the fruit mixture will not hold together or fill the mold neatly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, cream, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, cream, lettuce. 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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