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Salad

Fruit Salad

A mixed fruit salad of oranges, bananas, mangosteens, soursop, papaya, pineapple, grapes, and optional cherries and cucumber, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and pineapple 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 ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the oranges and remove as much of the white pith as possible.

  2. Cut 4 oranges into thin slices, then into quarters, discarding the seeds.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the orange pieces in a glass dish or deep bowl.

  2. Add the sliced bananas, mangosteens, soursop, papaya, pineapple strips, and white grapes with their juice.

  3. Squeeze the juice from the remaining 2 oranges over the salad.

  4. Sprinkle a little sugar on top and add preserved cherries and finely sliced cucumber if desired.

  5. Serve chilled.

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. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Papaya + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Banana + papayatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 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

Oranges
Provide the main juicy body and acidity that brightens the salad.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juice.

Swap the cucumber

The recipe marks cucumber as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, banana, soursop, papaya, pineapple, grape, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

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

More fruit salad recipes

Dressing 41Ambrosia 24Pineapple 21Grape 15Frozen 10Mixed 8 See all 267 →

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