Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 2 apples; 3 bananas; 1 celery heart; ½ cup walnuts (chopped); ½ can pineapple; 1 cup salad dressing (Durkee's preferred); Lettuce leaves

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

Cut apples, celery, and walnuts into small pieces.
Slice bananas.

Assemble and serve

Mix all ingredients together and lay on lettuce leaves to form a mound.
Cut pineapple slices in half and place around the mound.
Pour salad dressing over the mound 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.

Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together733 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together435 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Apple + pineappletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together530 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Add crisp texture and a mild tartness that balances the sweet fruit.
Bananas: Add natural sweetness and a soft, creamy texture to the salad.
Walnuts: Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and richness, binding the fruit together with a tangy, creamy coating.

Swap the celery

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

Cinnamonfits better
Clovefits about as well
Tarragonfits about as well
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, banana, walnut, pineapple, lettuce. 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.