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Salad

Fruit and Ginger Ale Salad

A chilled fruit salad thickened with gelatin, lemon juice, ginger ale, and ginger syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,659 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Fruit and Ginger Ale Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Soften gelatin in cold water.

  2. Mix boiling water, sugar, and ginger syrup.

  3. Heat the mixture to boiling and pour over gelatin.

  4. Add lemon juice.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. Add ginger ale.

Set and serve

  1. Chill, stirring occasionally.

  2. When the mixture begins to thicken, add fruit.

  3. Turn into moistened moulds and chill.

  4. Serve with Cream Mayonnaise.

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. Grape + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Grape + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Preserved ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and a chewy bite to the salad.

The step that matters

Adding the fruit as the mixture begins to thicken. If the fruit goes in too early, it sinks to the bottom as the liquid stays thin. If it goes in too late, the gelatin is too firm to hold the pieces evenly, so they stay clumped at the surface.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, ginger, syrup, grape, apple, pineapple):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, ginger, syrup, grape, apple, 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.

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