Name: Frozen Fruits
Ingredients: berries (hulled and stemmed); fine sugar; bananas (peeled and sliced thinly); lemon juice; salt; cinnamon; pineapples (peeled and cut into small cubes); tomatoes (peeled and cut into quarters)

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 ↓

Frozen Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit by hulling or stemming berries and sprinkling them with fine sugar.
For bananas, sprinkle the slices with sugar and lemon juice.
Mix a pinch of salt and cinnamon with the sugar for added flavor.
Remove the outer rind and eyes from the pineapples, cut the soft part into small cubes, and sweeten to taste.
Peel the tomatoes, cut them into quarters, and sprinkle with salt and sugar.
Place the prepared fruit in a can without the beaters, surround it with ice and salt, and let it chill for about an hour without stirring.

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).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,592 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Cinnamon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,348 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the tomato

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

Sweet potatofits better
Capsicumfits better
Arrowrootfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, banana, lemon, cinnamon, pineapple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.