Why it works: Tarragon and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Fruit Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Chill the grapes, grapefruit, banana, and cherries thoroughly.
Whip the sweet cream until very light.
Make the dressing
Gradually add the sugar and tarragon vinegar to the whipped cream.
Assemble and serve
Arrange the fruit in a bowl with the bleached lettuce leaves.
Pour the dressing over the salad just before serving.
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.
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Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together425 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Grapefruit + lettucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together118 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Grape + bananatop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together496 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Grapefruit + tarragontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together12 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,547 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet cream
- Whipped to a light foam, it gives the dressing body and a rich, smooth coating.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the vinegar and citrus.
- Tarragon vinegar
- Adds acidity and a sharp aroma that cuts through the richness of the cream.
- White grapes
- Provide juicy sweetness and a crisp texture to the salad.
- Grapefruit
- Adds tart citrus flavour and juicy segments that contrast with the sweet dressing.
- Banana
- Adds soft texture and mild sweetness to the fruit mix.
The step that matters
Pour the dressing over the salad just before serving. Acid in the vinegar and juices can slowly thin the whipped cream and soften the fruit, so the dressing should be added at the last moment to keep its light texture.
Swap the grape
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grapefruit, banana, cream, sugar, tarragon, vinegar, lettuce):
- Limefits better
- Cherryfits better
- Avocadofits better
- Grapethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against grapefruit, banana, cream, sugar, tarragon, vinegar, lettuce. 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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