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Dessert

Fruit Salad

Fruit Salad with oranges, apples, grapes, celery, walnuts, and a dressing of egg yolks, sugar, mustard, cayenne pepper, vinegar, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the oranges into small pieces.

  2. Peel the apples, slice them thin, and cut into small pieces.

  3. Squeeze the lemon over the apples immediately to prevent browning.

  4. Seed the grapes and cut them up.

  5. Soak the celery in ice water.

  6. Chop the celery finely.

Make the dressing

  1. Prepare the dressing: mix the sugar, corn starch, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light, then add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Thin the mixture with 1 tablespoon of cold water, then gradually add 1½ cups of boiling water while stirring constantly.

  4. Cook the mixture until thickened.

  5. Add the vinegar and salt.

  6. Strain the dressing if it is not smooth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the fruit and add the walnuts 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. Apple + grapetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 as they cook and give it a rich, smooth body.
Corn starch
Thickens the dressing when heated, giving it a smooth, spoonable consistency.
Apples
Provide the crisp, juicy bulk of the salad, which the lemon juice protects from browning.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sweet dressing and balances the fruit.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty contrast to the soft fruit and dressing.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the vinegar and lemon.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing until thickened. Egg yolks can scramble if the mixture overheats, and starch thickens only when it reaches a boil. Stir constantly and cook gently until it coats a spoon, then strain out any lumps.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, grape, walnut, lemon, celery, pepper, egg):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cranberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, grape, walnut, lemon, celery, pepper, egg. 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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