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Dessert

Sunday Dessert

A chilled gelatin dessert made with oranges, bananas, pineapple, coconut, and lemon juice.

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 ↓

Sunday Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Sprinkle the oranges with powdered sugar and let them stand for one hour.

  2. Add the sliced bananas, finely cut pineapple, and grated coconut to the oranges.

Make the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 15 minutes.

  2. Place the soaked gelatin on the stove and pour in the boiling water.

  3. Add the sugar and stir until melted.

  4. Remove the mixture from heat.

  5. Add the lemon juice to the mixture.

  6. Strain the mixture.

Layer and serve

  1. When the mixture begins to congeal, layer it in a dish with the mixed fruits until all is used.

  2. Serve cold 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. 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. Banana + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Pineapple + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

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

  5. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable dessert once it cools.
Oranges
Add juicy fruit flavor and soft texture to the layers.
Bananas
Add soft texture and mild sweetness to the fruit layers.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Layer when the mixture begins to congeal. If the gelatin is still fully liquid, the fruit will sink and float unevenly. If it has set too far, the layers will not bond and will be hard to spoon. Layering at the early thickening stage keeps the fruit evenly suspended and the layers joined.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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