Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: a spoonful of whipped cream; 2 bananas

Why it works: Cream and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,180 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

a spoonful of whipped cream
2 bananas

Directions

Prepare

Cut the bananas, oranges, dates and grapes all into small pieces.

Serve

Serve on lettuce leaf with a few pecans, or some kind of nuts, and a spoonful of whipped cream.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

156Calories

2 gProtein

6 gFat

27 gCarbs

What these numbers assume: 2 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Banana	1 medium (118g)	105
Cream	1 tbsp (15ml) heavy	51

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Christian, Mollie. 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. See the original page.

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.

Cream + bananatop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,180 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Whipped cream: Adds a soft, creamy richness that contrasts with the fresh fruit.
Bananas: Adds natural sweetness and a soft, smooth texture to the salad.

“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.