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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A gelatin-based fruit salad with oranges, bananas, grapes, candied cherries, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Add boiling water, sugar, and lemon juice; stir until dissolved.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool slightly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add the slices of oranges, bananas, white grapes, and candied cherries.

  2. Chill on ice and serve with whipped cream.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a light, wobbly base that holds the fruit in suspension.
Sugar
Sweetens the gelatine base and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and freshens the flavour of the fruit.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a soft, creamy contrast to the tart fruit and gelatine.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool slightly before adding the fruit. Gelatine begins to set as it cools. If the liquid is too hot, it can soften or break down the fruit, while if it is already thickening, the fruit will not distribute evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, orange, banana, grape, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, banana, grape, cream. 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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Dressing 41Ambrosia 24Pineapple 21Grape 15Frozen 10Mixed 8 See all 267 →

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