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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A layered fruit salad of currants, strawberries, raspberries, and optional pears or pineapple, sweetened with sugar and finished with wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: White currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks from the white currants.

  2. For larger fruits like pears or pineapple, peel, slice, and quarter them.

Layer the fruit

  1. In a deep dish, layer strawberries at the bottom and sift sugar over them.

  2. Add a layer of raspberries and then a layer of currants, repeating the process until the dish is full.

  3. Ensure sugar is sifted on each layer.

  4. Do not mix the fruit; keep it in layers.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, pour the wine over the layered fruit.

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. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes
  2. White currant + winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 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

White currants
Provide tart, sharp flavour that balances the sweetness of the sugar and fruit.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juices as it sits between the layers.
Hock or moselle wine
Adds aromatic, lightly acidic flavour and moistens the layered fruit.
Strawberries
Supply sweet flavour and juice that soaks into the layers below.
Raspberries
Add bright, floral acidity and juice to the layered fruit.

The step that matters

Keep the fruit in layers. Mixing breaks down soft berries and releases juice too early, leaving a mushy texture. Layering with sugar keeps each fruit intact while its juices slowly dissolve the sugar.

Swap the white currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine. 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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