Name: Fruit and Nut Salad
Ingredients: 3 oranges; ½ lb. white grapes; 3 bananas; ¼ lb. English walnuts; 4 tablespoons olive oil; 2 tablespoons lemon juice; ½ teaspoon salt

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 and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel and slice the oranges lengthwise.
Cut the bananas into thin slices.
Skin and seed the white grapes.
Blanch and slice the English walnuts.

Dress and serve

Dress with olive oil, lemon juice (less if the oranges are sour), and salt.
Serve the fruit and nuts very cold on 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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Grape + bananatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Walnut + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,087 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,771 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil: Adds richness and carries flavour across the fruit.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit and keeps it fresh-tasting.
English walnuts: Add crunch and a toasty, fatty bite against the soft fruit.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, grape, walnut, olive, lemon):

Cranberryfits better
Figfits better
Limefits better
Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, grape, walnut, olive, lemon. 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.