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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A fruit salad made with grapefruit, celery, nuts, pineapple, garnished with cherries and dressed with a chosen dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Grapefruit and pineapple work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 95 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the grapefruit in half and remove the flesh, leaving the rind intact.

  2. In a bowl, combine the grapefruit flesh, celery, nuts, and pineapple.

  3. Spoon the mixture back into the grapefruit rinds.

Serve

  1. Garnish with cherries and drizzle with dressing before serving.

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. Grapefruit + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Grapefruit + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Nuts + pineappletop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Celery + pineappletop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Celery + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit
Provides the juicy base and the rind serves as a edible-looking serving vessel.
Celery
Adds a crisp, crunchy texture to the salad.
Nuts
Add crunch and a rich, toasty bite against the soft fruit.
Pineapple
Adds sweetness and a tangy, juicy note.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grapefruit, celery, pineapple):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grapefruit, celery, pineapple. 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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