Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: ½ pound blanched almonds, chopped very fine; 4 oranges, pared and sliced; 1 can pineapple, chopped fine; 3 bananas or peaches, pears, French cherries, strawberries, or other fruit in like proportions; powdered sugar; ½ cup lemon juice; 2 tablespoons sherry; 2 tablespoons maraschino liquor (or other liquor); stewed cranberries (optional); grated coconut (optional, instead of almonds)

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together733 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Banana + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together549 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Pineapple + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together651 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,093 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Blanched almonds: Add crunch and nutty flavour to the top layer.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the fruit and balances the sugar.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the fruit layers and draws out some juice as it dissolves.

“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.