Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Salad

A mixed fruit salad with grapes, tangerine, bananas, plums, cherries, preserved fruit, sweet syrup, lemon juice, and liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Remove the stems from the black and green grapes, and pit the cherries and French plums.

  2. Peel the tangerine, slice it, and remove the seeds.

  3. Slice the bananas and preserved fruit, then combine all the fruit in a large bowl.

Make the syrup and soak

  1. Boil the water and sugar until thick and syrupy.

  2. Add the lemon juice and liqueur to the syrup, then pour it over the fruit mixture.

  3. Cover and set aside until cold.

  4. Chill on ice if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve in a glass dish.

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. Banana + plumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Banana + rumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Grape + plumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Grape + bananatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 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

Loaf sugar
Dissolves into the water to make a thick syrup that sweetens the fruit.
Black grapes
Provide juicy body and sweetness to the salad.
Bananas
Add soft texture and creamy body to the fruit mixture.
Rum, brandy, or maraschino
Adds aroma and a warming, spirited flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Let the syrup cool fully before pouring over the fruit. Hot syrup softens delicate fruit and bananas quickly, turning them mushy, so letting it cool until cold keeps the pieces firm.

Swap the tangerine

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

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Tangerinethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, orange, banana, plum, sugar, lemon, rum. 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 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes