Name: Fruit Cocktail
Ingredients: 1 grapefruit, pulp removed; ½ cup shredded pineapple; ½ cup bananas, sliced and quartered; 8 strawberries, halved (4 per person); ⅓ cup sherry wine; 3 tablespoons apricot brandy; ½ cup sugar; a few grains salt; candied cherries for garnish

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 Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, mix the grapefruit pulp with shredded pineapple, quartered bananas, and halved strawberries.
Use half as much pineapple and banana as grapefruit.

Dress and chill

Pour over the dressing made from sherry wine, apricot brandy, sugar, and salt.
Chill thoroughly.

Serve

Serve in double cocktail glasses and garnish with candied cherries.

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 + apricottop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together377 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Banana + apricottop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together124 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate (fruity).
Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,209 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Grapefruit + pineappletop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together95 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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 base and its tart, juicy pulp.
Sherry wine: Adds aroma and a rich, slightly sweet, nutty flavour to the dressing.
Sugar: Sweetens the dressing and balances the tartness of the citrus.
Apricot brandy: Adds fruity, aromatic flavour that complements the fruit in the dressing.

Swap the grapefruit

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, banana, sherry, wine, apricot, brandy, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Plumfits better
Applefits better
Grapefruitthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, banana, sherry, wine, apricot, brandy, sugar. 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.