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Dessert

Mixed Fruit Cup

A chilled fruit cup made with boiled sugar water, lemon juice, vanilla, orange juice, and sliced fruit.

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

Mixed Fruit Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water together for 3 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and chill thoroughly.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, add the lemon juice, vanilla, orange juice, and all the fruit.

  2. Serve with crushed ice.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Vanilla + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 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
Dissolves in the boiling water to make a sweet syrup that sweetens the whole cup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit flavors.
Orange juice
Adds citrus sweetness and acidity, plus liquid that carries the fruit flavors.
Vanilla
Adds a warm aroma that rounds out the fruit and citrus flavors.
Strawberries
Add fresh fruit flavor, color and juiciness to the cup.
Pineapple
Adds tangy, juicy fruit flavor and texture to the cup.

The step that matters

Chill the syrup thoroughly. Cooling the sugar syrup fully before adding juices and fruit keeps the cup cold when crushed ice is added, so it stays refreshing rather than becoming watery and warm.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vanilla, orange, banana, pineapple. 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.

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