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Dessert

Neapolitan Salad

A gelatin-set fruit salad of pineapple, oranges, bananas, and candied cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Neapolitan Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Add sugar, pineapple juice, lemon juice, and orange juice.

  3. Melt the mixture over a tea kettle.

Assemble and set

  1. Strain the melted mixture over the diced pineapple, oranges, and bananas.

  2. Add the candied cherries or other candied fruit.

  3. Place in a cold area until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with or without cream.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + bananatop 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

Gelatine
Sets the melted juice mixture into a soft, sliceable jelly that holds the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and adds body to the syrup base.
Bananas
Provide soft fruit texture and mild sweetness within the set jelly.
Candied cherries or other candied fruit
Add concentrated sweetness, chew, and color to the salad.

The step that matters

Strain the melted mixture over the fruit. Gelatine only sets when the mixture is fully dissolved and no longer boiling; if it is too hot, the fruit can soften or discolour, and if it cools too long before pouring it may set unevenly around the fruit.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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