Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Salad

A fruit salad with oranges, pineapple, grapes, and a vinaigrette dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pineapple and grape match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 709 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel and segment the oranges, and drain the pineapple.

  2. Combine the oranges, pineapple, and grapes in a large bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, mix vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt, red pepper, and butter.

  2. Cook over a double boiler until thick.

  3. Let the dressing cool, then beat in the whipped cream.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the fruit and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture to the cooled dressing.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances its sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the cooked dressing a smoother, richer body.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing until thick over a double boiler. Gentle indirect heat lets the egg-free mixture thicken slowly without scorching or curdling. Overheating can make it grainy or cause it to separate, so it should be watched closely and removed once thick.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, pineapple, grape, vinegar, sugar, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, pineapple, grape, vinegar, sugar, pepper, butter. 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 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesPineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipes