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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A gelatin-based fruit salad with pineapple, oranges, bananas, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in 2 teacups of cold water overnight.

Make the mixture

  1. Add 1 cup of hot water and the lemon juice to the gelatine.

  2. Stir in 2 cups of sugar until dissolved.

  3. Add the can of pineapple, then sprinkle sugar over the mixture.

  4. Slice the oranges and bananas, and add them to the gelatine mixture.

Set

  1. Set the mixture on ice until it is cold and firm.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Forms the gel that holds the fruit suspended and gives the salad its firm set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Pineapple
Adds sweet, juicy fruit flavour and moisture to the set mixture.
Oranges
Add juicy citrus flavour and moisture to the salad.
Bananas
Add soft texture and mild sweetness to the set mixture.

The step that matters

Set the mixture on ice until cold and firm. Gelatine only sets when it is well chilled. Cooling it fully lets the gel firm up enough to hold the fruit evenly suspended instead of sinking or staying runny.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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