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Dessert

Fruit Salad with Dressing

A fruit salad of pineapple, oranges, and bananas topped with a sweet egg-based dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 10,634 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Salad with Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the pineapple, oranges, and bananas into small cubes.

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together.

  2. Add the fruit syrup and lemon juice, stirring constantly in a double boiler until it thickens.

  3. Cool the dressing and beat it a little.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the fruit.

  2. Chill on ice for 30 minutes before serving.

  3. Serve it over the sliced fruit.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,118 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and helps stabilise the beaten eggs.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet dressing and balances the fruit.
Fruit syrup
Sweetens and thins the dressing, adding fruit flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg dressing in the double boiler. Egg proteins set at moderate heat; if the mixture gets too hot or is not stirred constantly, the eggs can scramble and curdle instead of thickening smoothly.

Flavor stand-ins for the banana

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Limebetter flavor fit
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, orange, egg, syrup, sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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