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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A gelatin dessert made with strawberries, oranges, bananas, nuts, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in 1 pint of cold water for ½ hour.

  2. Add 1 pint of hot water to the gelatin mixture.

  3. Stir in the sugar until dissolved.

  4. Squeeze the juice from the lemons and add it to the gelatin mixture.

  5. Add 1 quart of cold water to the mixture.

  6. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth.

  7. Set the mixture in the refrigerator until it begins to thicken.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the bananas and slice them lengthwise.

  2. Cut the banana slices into ¼ inch thick pieces.

  3. Peel the oranges, removing all the white part.

  4. Slice the oranges crosswise into ½ inch thick pieces, then cut the orange slices into small pieces.

  5. Stem the strawberries.

Layer and set

  1. In a cold, damp dish or pan, layer the fruit and nuts.

  2. Pour the gelatin over the layered fruit and nuts.

  3. If the gelatin is chilled enough, the fruit will rise and distribute evenly. If the gelatin is not chilled enough, let it cool longer.

  4. Use a fork to place the fruit down through the jelly if needed.

  5. Once the gelatin has thickened, loosen the edges with a knife.

  6. Turn the gelatin out onto a plate to serve.

  7. Serve with whipped cream and a nice cake.

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. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + bananatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly that holds the fruit in place.
Strawberries
Add fresh fruit flavour, colour and moisture to the set jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the gelatin and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavour of the jelly.
Nut meats
Add crunch and texture contrast to the soft jelly and fruit.

The step that matters

Chill the gelatin to the right point before pouring over the fruit. Gelatin must be cool and partly thickened so the fruit can be suspended evenly; if it is too warm, the fruit sinks or floats unevenly, and if it is too cold and set, it cannot be poured or distributed.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, meat, lemon, sugar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, meat, lemon, 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.

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