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Dessert

Fruit Salad

Fruit salad with pear, pineapple, grapes, banana, lettuce, and a dressing of egg yolks, butter, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and banana 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. Peel and halve the pear, removing the seeds and scooping out a little flesh.

  2. Add the chopped pineapple, halved grapes, and sliced banana to the pear.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Mix in salt, sugar, mustard, and red pepper, then beat again.

  3. Gradually add the melted butter, lemon juice, and vinegar.

  4. Before serving, fold in the whipped cream.

  5. If the dressing separates, whip it again until it combines.

Serve

  1. Serve the fruit salad on a lettuce leaf and pour the dressing over it.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pear + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pear + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Pear + grapetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and lemon juice to thicken the dressing.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the dressing a smooth, creamy body.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a soft, airy texture to the dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon juice and vinegar.

The step that matters

Adding the melted butter gradually. Egg yolks can only hold butter in an emulsion if it is added slowly while beating. Adding it too fast makes the dressing separate, which is why the record says to whip it again if it does.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, pineapple, grape, banana, egg, butter, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, pineapple, grape, banana, egg, butter, vinegar. 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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