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Dessert

Fruit Salad

Fruit salad made with gelatin, bananas, grapes, pineapple, candied cherries, oranges, lemon juice, vanilla, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in cold water.

  2. Add boiling water and stir until fully dissolved.

Add the fruit

  1. Slice the bananas and add them to the mixture.

  2. Add green grapes, pineapple with juice, candied cherries, quartered oranges, lemon juice, and vanilla.

  3. If using, add sherry or claret and reduce the amount of water.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it harden.

  2. Serve with or without whipped 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Banana + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pineapple + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Grape + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable mold that holds the fruit in place.
Bananas
Add soft texture and natural sweetness to the set mixture.
Green grapes
Add juiciness and a mild, tart sweetness that suits the set base.
Candied cherries
Add concentrated sweetness and bright colour to the fruit mix.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the fruit and candied cherries.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before adding fruit. Gelatine only sets when it has fully dissolved in hot liquid. Undissolved granules or liquid that is too hot can leave weak or patchy setting, so the mould may not hold together.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, grape, pineapple, orange, vanilla, sherry. 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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