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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A chilled fruit salad with pineapple, oranges, bananas, and a brandy‑infused syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and banana 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

  1. Combine the sliced pineapple, oranges, and bananas in a glass fruit dish.

  2. Boil the water and sugar together for 5 minutes to make a syrup.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the brandy.

  4. Pour the syrup over the fruit and chill on ice until ready to 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. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  4. Pineapple + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Adds sweetness, tartness and juice that mingles with the syrup.
Oranges
Add juice and acidity that brighten the sweet syrup.
Bananas
Soft flesh with mild sweetness that blends into the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps it coat the fruit.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, boozy flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Stir in the brandy after removing the syrup from the heat. Alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than water, so adding brandy to boiling syrup drives off much of its aroma and alcohol. Cooling the syrup first keeps the brandy's flavour in the finished fruit.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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