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Fruit Cocktail

A chilled mixed fruit drink with grapefruit, pineapple, banana, strawberries, sherry, apricot brandy, sugar, salt, garnished with candied cherries.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the grapefruit pulp, shredded pineapple, sliced and quartered bananas, and halved strawberries.

  2. Use half as much pineapple and banana as grapefruit, and allow 4 strawberries per person.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine sherry wine, apricot brandy, sugar, and salt to make the dressing.

Chill and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the fruit mixture and chill thoroughly.

  2. Serve in double cocktail glasses and garnish with candied cherries.

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. Pineapple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

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

  3. Banana + apricottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate (fruity).

  4. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Grapefruit + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit
Provides the tart, juicy base of the fruit mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sherry and fruit acidity.
Sherry wine
Adds aromatic depth and moisture to the dressing.
Apricot brandy
Adds fruity aroma and flavor to the dressing.

Swap the grapefruit

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, banana, sherry, wine, apricot, brandy, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Grapefruitthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, banana, sherry, wine, apricot, brandy, 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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