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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A mixed fruit salad of peaches, bananas, pineapple, cherries, topped with lemon-sugar sauce and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the peaches and place them in a dish.

  2. Slice the bananas, pineapple, and cherries, and add them to the dish.

Dress and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix lemon juice and sugar to create a sauce, then pour it over the fruit.

  2. Cover the fruit salad with whipped cream and serve.

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. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Peach + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together168 recipes

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

  3. Peach + bananatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together130 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the main fruit body and juicy sweetness of the salad.
Bananas
Add creamy texture and natural sweetness to the fruit mix.
Pineapple
Adds bright, tangy flavor that contrasts with the sweeter fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and slows browning of cut fruit.
Whipped cream
Adds rich fat and a light, creamy topping over the fruit.

The step that matters

Pour the lemon and sugar sauce over the fruit. Cut fruit browns quickly when exposed to air, so the acidic lemon juice should be added promptly to slow oxidation and keep the salad fresh-looking.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, banana, pineapple, sugar, cream. 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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