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Salad

Fruit Salad

A fruit salad with orange, banana, pineapple, grapes, cherries, walnuts, mustard‑butter dressing, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 the fruit

  1. Peel and chop the orange, bananas, and pineapple.

  2. Combine with grapes, cherries, and walnuts in a salad dish.

Make the dressing

  1. In a small bowl, stir together mustard, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Heat vinegar in a saucepan.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks.

  4. Add the mustard mixture and cook until thickened.

  5. Set the dressing aside to cool.

  6. Fold in the whipped cream.

  7. Pour over the 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 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. Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  4. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook and give it a rich, smooth body.
Whipped cream
Adds a light, airy texture and creaminess to the cooled dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sweet fruit.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, tangy flavour that complements the dressing.

The step that matters

Add the mustard mixture and cook until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, so the dressing should be cooked gently and stirred constantly until it thickens smoothly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, banana, pineapple, grape, walnut, butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, banana, pineapple, grape, walnut, butter, pepper. 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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