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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A mixed fruit salad with bananas, pineapple, oranges, lemons, passion fruit, powdered sugar, citrus rinds, and sweetened whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Slice the bananas thinly.

  2. Chop the pineapple.

  3. Pulp the oranges and remove the insides of the passion fruit.

Season and finish

  1. Add powdered sugar, grated rind of 1 orange, grated rind of 1 lemon, and juice of both lemons.

  2. Cover with sweetened whipped cream and decorate with colored jellies or pink sugar.

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 + pineappletop 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. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  5. Pineapple + passion fruittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the main body and natural sweetness of the salad.
Pineapple
Adds juicy texture and a bright, tangy flavour.
Oranges
Contribute juice and sweetness, with pulp giving body to the salad.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Sweetened whipped cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy coating over the fruit.

Swap the passion fruit

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Passion fruitthe original

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

More fruit salad recipes

Dressing 41Ambrosia 24Pineapple 21Grape 15Frozen 10Mixed 8 See all 267 →

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