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Dessert

Fruit Salad

Fruit salad with oranges, grapes, pineapples, cherries, syrup of water, sugar, lemon juice, optional sherry and gelatine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, mix ½ cup of water, 1 cup of sugar, and a little lemon juice.

  2. Heat until sugar dissolves.

  3. Let the syrup cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine oranges, grapes, pineapples, and cherries in any desired proportion.

  2. Mix the syrup with the fruits.

  3. If desired, thicken the syrup with gelatine. Soften 1 teaspoon of gelatine in cold water, then dissolve the softened gelatine in the hot syrup.

  4. Add a few tablespoons of sherry to enhance the flavor.

  5. Serve the fruit salad chilled with 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

  5. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps create the sweet, slightly viscous base for the fruit.
Gelatine
Optional setting agent that thickens the syrup as it cools.
Oranges
Provide the main juicy fruit body and bright citrus flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the syrup and balances its sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolve the softened gelatine in the hot syrup. Gelatine must be softened in cold water first, then fully dissolved in warm liquid; if it is added cold or left to boil, it may clump or lose its setting power.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, grape, pineapple, sugar, sherry. 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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