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Fruit Salad Dressing

A citrus dressing thickened with cornstarch and egg yolks, finished with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Fruit Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine the orange juice, lemon juice, salt, sugar, and cornstarch.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Whisk in the egg yolks until well combined.

Finish and serve

  1. Fold in the whipped cream just 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the dressing, adding richness and a smooth body as they set gently with heat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the citrus juice mixture as it boils, giving the dressing body.
Cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when folded in whipped.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the citrus juices.

The step that matters

Whisk in the egg yolks after cooling. Hot mixtures can scramble egg yolks, leaving lumps. Letting the mixture cool slightly before whisking in the yolks helps them blend smoothly and thicken without curdling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg, 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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