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Dessert

Spanish Fruit Salad

A fruit salad of oranges, coconut, pineapple, served with ice water and small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 651 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spanish Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the oranges, removing the pulp.

  2. Grate the coconut and slice the pineapple.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer the oranges, coconut, and pineapple alternately in a dish until full.

  2. Pour the ice water over the layered fruit.

  3. Serve with small cakes.

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. Coconut + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide the juicy, sweet-tart fruit that forms most of the layers.
Coconut
Adds a soft, slightly chewy texture and mild sweetness between the fruit layers.
Pineapple
Adds juicy body and a bright, acidic flavour to the layers.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, pineapple. 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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