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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A mixed fruit salad with bananas, orange, pineapple, cherries, lettuce, French dressing, and grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and pineapple 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

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice the bananas and orange.

  2. Chop enough pineapple to make ½ cup.

  3. Mix the sliced fruit and cherries together.

Assemble and serve

  1. Lay the mixture on a bed of lettuce.

  2. Pour French dressing over the salad.

  3. Just before serving, sprinkle with grated coconut.

  4. Serve cold.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Banana + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Pineapple + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Add natural sweetness and a soft, creamy texture to the salad.
Orange
Adds acidity and juice that brightens the flavour of the fruit.
Pineapple
Adds sweetness and a tangy bite that balances the milder fruit.
French dressing
Adds fat, acidity and moisture that coat the fruit and season it.
Grated coconut
Adds a light, dry texture and mild sweetness on top of the salad.

The step that matters

Sprinkle with grated coconut just before serving. Coconut is dry and absorbs moisture from the dressing and fruit juices. If added early, it softens and loses its texture, so it should go on at the last moment.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Carrotfits about as well

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