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Dessert

Apricot and Strawberry Salad

A fruit salad of apricots or cherries, strawberries, bananas, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Apricot and Strawberry Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stew the apricots or cherries and let them cool.

  2. Peel and slice the bananas.

  3. Remove the stems from the strawberries.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix all the fruits lightly in a bowl.

  2. Whip the cream and pile it on top.

  3. Decorate with some of the strawberries.

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. Apricot + bananatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

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

  2. Banana + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

  3. Apricot + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,116 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide fresh, juicy fruit with sweetness and a bright, tangy flavour.
Apricots or cherries
Stewing softens the fruit and concentrates its sweet-tart flavour for the salad.
Bananas
Add soft, creamy body and mild sweetness to the fruit mixture.
Cream
Whipped, it adds richness and a light, airy topping that carries the fruit.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, 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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