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Dessert

Fruit Salad

A chilled fruit salad with bananas, oranges, pineapple, figs, walnuts, and a lemon-maraschino dressing, set with gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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

Prepare the fruit and dressing

  1. Cut the bananas and oranges into slices and place them on lettuce leaves.

  2. For the dressing, combine lemon juice, sugar, maraschino, and water in a saucepan; stir over heat until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Let the dressing cool, then pour it over the fruit and garnish with candied cherries.

Make the gelatine mixture

  1. For the gelatine, cover it with cold water and let it stand for 20 minutes.

  2. Add boiling water and sugar to the gelatine; strain and set aside until it begins to thicken.

  3. Mix in chopped pineapple, lemon juice, and the pieces of oranges, ginger, figs, and walnuts.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until set.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Banana + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pineapple + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 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

Gelatine
Sets the mixture into a firm, sliceable body as it cools.
Figs
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the set mold.
Walnut meats
Add crunch and a nutty flavour against the soft fruit.
Bananas
Add soft texture and mild sweetness to the fruit base.

The step that matters

Let the gelatine thicken before adding the fruit. Gelatine must be partly set but still liquid when the fruit is stirred in. If it is fully set, the fruit will not distribute evenly; if too warm, it will not hold the fruit in place once chilled.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, orange, lemon, sugar, pineapple, ginger, fig. 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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