Skip to main content
Main

Melons and Fbuit Salad

A salad of melons, grape fruit, orange, banana, optionally with sherry and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Melon and grape work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 126 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Melons and Fbuit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut small melons in half and remove the seeds.

  2. Fill each half with bits of grape fruit, orange, and a little banana; do not use more than two kinds of fruit.

  3. If desired, pour a little sherry mixed with a spoonful of powdered sugar over the fruit.

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. Melon + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Grape + bananatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  3. Melon + bananatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

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

  4. Grape + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small melons
Serve as the edible shells that hold the fruit filling.
Grape fruit
Adds tart, bright flavour that balances the sweetness of the other fruit.
Orange
Adds juicy sweetness and a citrus aroma to the filling.
Banana
Adds soft texture and mild sweetness to the filling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against melon, grape, banana, sherry, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Stuffed Pickled MelonsStuffed Pickled Melons30 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes