Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 1 small pineapple; 2 apples; 3 bananas; ½ lb almonds or pignolias or any other nut; equal quantities of honey and lemon

Why it works: Pineapple and banana 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

Slice the pineapple into pieces.
Slice the apples and bananas in the same way.
Chop the almonds or other nuts.

Combine and dress

Combine all the fruit and nuts in a bowl.
Dress the mixture with equal amounts of honey and lemon.

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.

Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together733 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together435 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Pineapple + appletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together530 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Banana + honeytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together395 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Apple + honeytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together569 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Honey: Adds sweetness and a sticky coating that helps the dressing cling to the fruit.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and slows browning of cut apples and bananas.
Almonds: Add crunch and a toasted, nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft fruit.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, apple, banana, almond, honey):

Figfits better
Pearfits better
Strawberryfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, apple, banana, almond, honey. 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.