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Dessert

Frozen Fruit Salad

A chilled fruit mixture of pineapple, orange, celery, banana, and cherries bound with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Frozen Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Drain the fruit in a colander.

  2. In a bowl, mix the drained fruit with the mayonnaise.

  3. Pack the mixture into a quart mold, filling it tightly.

Freeze

  1. Pack the mold in salt and ice until frozen, about 3 hours.

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. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Orange + celerytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together452 recipes

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

  5. Pineapple + celerytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise
Adds fat and a creamy body that binds the fruit and celery together.
Celery
Adds a crisp, crunchy texture that contrasts with the soft fruit.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, orange, banana. 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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