Why it works: Pineapple and grapefruit work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 95 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓
Fruit Cocktails
Ingredients
Directions
Wash and cap the berries, then sprinkle them with sugar and let them stand for an hour.
Mash the berries finely and place them in cocktail glasses.
Serve with a spoonful of green-colored pineapple sherbet.
Use a vegetable scoop to cut balls from the cantaloupe and fill half of it, cutting it into points.
Add pink raspberries in claret syrup, and small pieces of grapefruit with maraschino cherries.
Drizzle a little sherry over the mixture for added flavor.
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.
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Pineapple + grapefruittop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together95 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
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Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,842 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together228 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
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Grapefruit + sherrytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together37 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
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Pineapple + syruptop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together568 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the grapefruit
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pineapple, syrup, sherry):
- Vanillafits better
- Apricotfits better
- Figfits better
- Grapefruitthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pineapple, syrup, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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