Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 3 oranges; ½ pound white grapes; 3 bananas; mayonnaise

Why it works: Grape and banana work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

3 oranges
½ pound white grapes
3 bananas
mayonnaise

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Remove seeds and membrane from the oranges and take the pulp.
Skin and seed the grapes.
Peel and slice the bananas very thin.

Assemble and serve

Mix all the fruit together.
Moisten with mayonnaise and serve.

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.

Grape + bananatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,771 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,118 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

Mayonnaise: Adds richness and moisture, binding the fruit into a creamy salad.
Bananas: Add soft texture and natural sweetness to the salad.
Oranges: Contribute juicy pulp and bright acidity to the salad.
White grapes: Add juicy sweetness and a crisp bite to the salad.