Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 1 pineapple, cored and sliced; 4 sweet oranges, peeled, quartered, and seeds removed; 4 bananas, peeled and sliced lengthwise; tiny mounds of grapes; ½ pint clear sugar syrup; flavoring of choice

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

1 pineapple, cored and sliced
4 sweet oranges, peeled, quartered, and seeds removed
4 bananas, peeled and sliced lengthwise
tiny mounds of grapes
½ pint clear sugar syrup
flavoring of choice

Directions

Arrange the fruit

Place the sliced pineapple in the center of a dish.
Arrange the quartered oranges in a border around the pineapple.
Arrange the banana slices like a zig-zag fence around the border.
Fill the 'V' shaped spaces with tiny mounds of grapes.

Finish and serve

Add any flavoring to the sugar syrup and pour it over the fruit before serving.

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).
Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together709 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Banana + grapetop 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).
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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple: Forms the centerpiece of the dish and adds a tart, juicy sweetness.
Sweet oranges: Provide a sweet, juicy border and a bright citrus aroma.
Bananas: Add creamy softness and mild sweetness to the arrangement.
Grapes: Fill the gaps with small bursts of juice and sweetness.
Sugar syrup: Sweetens the fruit and moistens it as it is poured over.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, banana, grape, sugar, syrup):

Vanillafits better
Pearfits better
Strawberryfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, banana, grape, sugar, syrup. 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.