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Fruit Salad

A mixed fruit salad with grapefruit or oranges, apples, bananas, celery, cream dressing, sea salt, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Grapefruit and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the grapefruit or oranges, removing all the bitter white skin.

  2. Cut the pulp of the grapefruit or oranges, bananas, and apples into small dice.

  3. Finely chop the celery.

  4. Combine the oranges and apples in a bowl; the apples will absorb the orange juice.

  5. Chill all the fruit on ice until serving time.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the fruit and celery together and place in a salad bowl.

  2. Cover with cream dressing mixed with one-third as much cream and a little more salt.

  3. Serve on a bed of tender lettuce leaves.

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. Grapefruit + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

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

  3. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Grapefruit + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Grapefruit + bananatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 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

Grapefruit or oranges
Provide the main fruit pulp and acidic juice that flavours the salad.
Apples
Absorb the orange juice, adding body and mild sweetness to the mixture.
Bananas
Add soft, creamy texture and natural sweetness to the fruit mix.
Celery
Adds crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Cream dressing
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy coating that moistens the fruit.

The step that matters

Peel the citrus fully. Leaving bitter white pith on the grapefruit or oranges makes the salad taste harsh, because the pith contains bitter compounds that the juicy pulp does not.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grapefruit, celery, banana, cream, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grapefruit, celery, banana, cream, lettuce. 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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