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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A chilled fruit salad with pineapple, orange, banana, lemon juice, wine, gelatin, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the pineapples and oranges into small pieces.

  2. Slice the bananas.

  3. Put all the fruit in a colander and drain.

Set and serve

  1. Heat the lemon juice and add 4 to 5 tablespoons of dissolved gelatin.

  2. Add the fruit and sweeten to taste.

  3. Pour into a flat pan and let it stand until the next day.

  4. Invert onto a platter and cut into squares.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Orange + bananatop 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

Gelatin
Sets the juice into a firm mass that holds the fruit in place when cut.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and helps keep the fruit fresh-tasting.
Bananas
Add soft texture and natural sweetness to the set mixture.
Pineapples
Add bright flavor and firm pieces that stay distinct within the gel.

The step that matters

Heat the lemon juice before adding the gelatin. Gelatin must be fully dissolved before it is mixed in, or it will not set evenly. Dissolving it in warm liquid lets it distribute and form a uniform gel as it cools.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, wine, orange, banana, gelatin, sugar. 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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