Name: Bananas, Oranges and Apples
Ingredients: Bananas; Oranges; Apples; Green leaves; Doily; Clean plate; Fruit knife

Why it works: Banana and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Bananas, Oranges and Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the fruits clean.
Arrange the fruits effectively by color and size.
Place green leaves among the fruits.
Use a flat dish for serving.
Provide a doily, clean plate, and fruit knife for each person.

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 + appletop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together435 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).