Name: Fruit and Nut Salad
Ingredients: ½ cup Malaga grapes, halved and seeds removed; ½ cup shredded fresh pineapple; ½ cup apple, peeled and diced; ¾ cup Brazil nuts, skinned and chopped; ½ tablespoon lemon juice; Cream Mayonnaise; Lettuce leaves for serving

Why it works: Grape and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,659 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Fruit and Nut Salad

Ingredients

½ cup Malaga grapes, halved and seeds removed
½ cup shredded fresh pineapple
½ cup apple, peeled and diced
¾ cup Brazil nuts, skinned and chopped
½ tablespoon lemon juice
Cream Mayonnaise
Lettuce leaves for serving

Directions

Prepare

Skin and remove seeds from the Malaga grapes, then cut them in halves lengthwise.

Mix and dress

In a bowl, mix the grapes, shredded pineapple, diced apple, and chopped Brazil nuts.
Add lemon juice and moisten the mixture with Cream Mayonnaise.

Serve

Arrange the salad in nests of lettuce leaves.
Garnish with additional Cream Mayonnaise forced through a pastry bag.

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.

Grape + appletop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,659 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Brazil nut + lettucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together12 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Grape + pineappletop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together709 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Pineapple + appletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together530 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Malaga grapes: Provide sweetness and juicy texture that contrasts with the crunchy nuts.
Brazil nuts: Add fat, crunch and a rich, buttery flavour to the salad.
Cream mayonnaise: Adds fat and creaminess, moistening the fruit and nuts into a cohesive salad.
Pineapple: Adds sweetness and a bright, juicy note to the mixture.
Apple: Adds crisp texture and mild sweetness, holding its shape in the salad.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grape, pineapple, apple, brazil nut, cream, lettuce):

Figfits better
Bananafits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, pineapple, apple, brazil nut, cream, lettuce. 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.