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Dessert

Fruit Salad Dressing

A sweet dressing made with butter, sugar, egg yolks, orange and lemon juice, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Cream the butter with the sugar until smooth.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix in the orange and lemon juice.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the butter and sugar, and cook until thick.

  4. Cool the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the whipped cream just before serving.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the dressing.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and helps the butter cream to a smooth texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a custard-like set.
Orange and lemon juice
Add acidity and bright citrus flavour that balances the sweetness.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and airy texture to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Cook the egg mixture until thick. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Cooking too little leaves the dressing runny, while too much heat can scramble the yolks into lumps. Stir steadily and watch closely.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, lemon, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, lemon, 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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