Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 2 cups Malaga grapes; 2 cups pineapple, diced; 2 cups Maraschino cherries, chopped; Lettuce leaves; Sweetened whipped cream or mayonnaise

Why it works: Grape and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 709 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

2 cups Malaga grapes
2 cups pineapple, diced
2 cups Maraschino cherries, chopped
Lettuce leaves
Sweetened whipped cream or mayonnaise

Directions

Prepare

Halve the grapes and remove the seeds.
Dice the pineapple.
Chop the cherries.

Assemble and serve

Mix all the ingredients together.
Arrange neatly on lettuce leaves.
Serve with sweetened whipped cream or 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.

Grape + pineappletop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together709 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together271 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Grape + lettucetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together349 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Pineapple + creamtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,574 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Lettuce + creamtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Malaga grapes: Provide juicy, sweet body and bulk to the salad.
Pineapple: Adds bright acidity and juiciness that balances the sweetness of the other fruit.
Maraschino cherries: Add concentrated sweetness and colour to the salad.