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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A fruit salad with oranges, apples, bananas, pineapple, and a dressing of egg yolks, vinegar, sugar, mustard, and red pepper, finished with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel and chop the oranges, apples, bananas, and pineapple.

Make the dressing

  1. In a double boiler, combine the egg yolks, vinegar, sugar, mustard, and red pepper.

  2. Cook the mixture until thickened, then let it cool.

  3. Once cooled, fold in the whipped cream.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the fruit with the dressing and serve.

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. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

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

  3. Apple + pineappletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing into a custard-like texture as they set when gently heated.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture to the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing until thickened. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Overheating can scramble them into lumps, so cook slowly in a double boiler and stop once the mixture coats a spoon.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, apple, banana, pineapple, egg, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, apple, banana, pineapple, egg, vinegar, sugar. 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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