Name: Pineapple Fritters
Ingredients: fresh pineapple; sugar; canned pineapple syrup; batter for Fruit Fritters; lard for frying; sugar (for sauce); raisins; sliced bananas

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 ↓

Pineapple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Pick or grate fresh pineapple and sprinkle with sugar. Let it sit for 2 hours.
Use the juice from the pineapple or syrup from canned pineapple to make the batter.
Stir the pineapple into the batter.
Fry the fritters in boiling lard.
Serve with a sauce made of sugar, raisins, and sliced bananas.

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).
Syrup + saucetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together173 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,147 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the raisin

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

Vanillafits better
Pearfits better
Strawberryfits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar, syrup, sauce, banana. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.