Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 6 oranges; 6 bananas; 1 small pineapple, sliced thin; powdered sugar, to taste; grated coconut, to taste; ½ cup cherry wine

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

Peel and slice the oranges and bananas.
Slice the pineapple thinly.

Assemble

In a glass dish, layer the fruits.
Sift powdered sugar and grated coconut between the layers.
Pour cherry wine over the entire dish.

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.

Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together733 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Banana + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together549 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Pineapple + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together651 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pineapple + cherrytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together537 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Banana + cherrytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together187 recipes

Shared aroma: n-butyl acetate (pear, banana).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges: Provide juice and bright acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Bananas: Add soft texture and natural sweetness to the layers.
Pineapple: Adds juicy texture and tart, sharp flavour to the salad.
Cherry wine: Adds moisture and a fruity aroma that soaks into the layered fruit.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, pineapple, sugar, coconut, cherry, wine):

Vanillafits better
Mangofits better
Figfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, pineapple, sugar, coconut, cherry, wine. 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.