Name: Grape-fruit
Ingredients: 1 large grapefruit; sugar to taste; a little wine

Why it works: Grapefruit and wine work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43 recipes. Both carry 1-p-menthene-8-thiol, which smells grapefruit. The science ↓

Grape-fruit

Ingredients

1 large grapefruit
sugar to taste
a little wine

Directions

Prepare

Cut the grapefruit crosswise instead of lengthwise.
Remove the seeds.

Macerate

Sprinkle sugar on top to taste.
Pour a little wine over the grapefruit.
Let it sit overnight for best flavor.

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.

Grapefruit + winetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-p-menthene-8-thiol (grapefruit).
Grapefruit + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together309 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together9,581 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit: Provides the main fruit flesh and tart, bitter flavor that the sugar balances.
Sugar: Sweetens the grapefruit and softens its acidity.
Wine: Adds aromatic flavor and a little liquid to the fruit.