Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 1 grapefruit; 1 cup pecan meats; 1 can white cherries; 2 lemons (juice); ½ box gelatine; 1½ cups cold water

Why it works: Grapefruit and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 184 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the celery, pineapple, and grapefruit into pieces.
Add chopped nuts, stoned cherries, and lemon juice.
Use the juice from the pineapple and cherries.
Dissolve gelatine in ½ cup cold water by placing the cup in hot water.
Stir the dissolved gelatine into the fruit mixture and let it congeal.
Serve with mayonnaise.

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.

Grapefruit + lemontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together184 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Meat + lemontop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,817 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Grapefruit + meattop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together42 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).