Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: Malaga grapes; pineapple; bananas; chopped pecans or walnuts; egg nog dressing; lettuce leaves; orange or grapefruit cases

Why it works: Pineapple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Slice Malaga grapes.
Cut or shred pineapple.
Slice bananas into small pieces.

Chill and serve

Mix fruits lightly with chopped pecans or walnuts and chill.
When ready to serve, mix with egg nog dressing.
Serve immediately on lettuce leaves or in orange or grapefruit cases.

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.

Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together733 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together709 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Grape + bananatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Grape + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,771 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas: Soft flesh adds body and natural sweetness to the salad.
Pecans or walnuts: Chopped nuts add crunch that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Egg nog dressing: Rich, creamy dressing coats the fruit and adds fat and sweetness.

Swap the pecans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grape, pineapple, banana, egg, lettuce, orange):

Almondfits better
Walnutfits better
Chestnutfits better
Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, pineapple, banana, egg, lettuce, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.