Name: Frozen Fruit Cup
Ingredients: raspberry ice; lemon ice; orange ice; ginger syrup; chopped ginger; maraschino cherries; banana; grapes

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Frozen Fruit Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Place a spoonful of raspberry, lemon, or orange ice in a sherbet glass.
Pour ginger syrup over the ice and add chopped ginger on the lemon ice or a tablespoon of maraschino cherries on the raspberry ice.
Garnish with very thin slices of banana and halved skinned and seeded grapes.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,833 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

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

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raspberry, lemon, orange, ginger, syrup, banana):

Peachfits better
Limefits better
Blackberryfits better
Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raspberry, lemon, orange, ginger, syrup, banana. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.