Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 6 oranges; 6 bananas; 1 pineapple; juice of 3 oranges; powdered sugar; sherry wine (optional)

Why it works: Banana and pineapple 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

Directions

Slice the oranges, bananas, and pineapple, then mix the sliced fruit together.
Squeeze the juice of 3 more oranges over the fruit.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar and add sherry wine if desired.

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.

Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together733 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together228 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Banana + sherrytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together117 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

Oranges: Provide juice that moistens the fruit and adds bright acidity.
Bananas: Add soft texture and mild sweetness to the salad.
Pineapple: Adds juicy texture and a tangy, sweet flavour.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the fruit and dissolves into the citrus juice.

Swap the orange

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

Vanillafits better
Strawberryfits better
Applefits better
Orangethe original

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