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Dessert

Fruta Salad

A fruit salad of raisins, prunes, fig, barley or oats, topped with nut cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and fig work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fruta Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the raisins, prunes, and fig into small pieces using scissors.

  2. Spread the chopped fruit over ½ cup of mashed malted barley, rolled oats, or wheat.

  3. Pour ½ cup of nut cream over the mixture.

  4. Let it stand for 15 minutes 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. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  2. Fig + barleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together48 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + barleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

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

  4. Barley + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together301 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Raisin + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,642 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture through the dish.
Prunes
Add concentrated sweetness and a soft, moist texture.
Fig
Adds sweetness and chewy texture with a mild, fruity flavor.
Malted barley or rolled oats or wheat
Forms the base layer that the chopped fruit sits on.
Nut cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the dried fruit as it stands.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, barley, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, barley, 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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