Name: Fruit Dessert
Ingredients: 1 pineapple, peeled and cut into small pieces; 4 bananas, sliced thin; 5 oranges, peeled, quartered, and halved; ½ pound canned or fresh Bartlett pears, cut into pieces; ½ pound Malaga grapes, halved and seeds removed; 1 small bottle Maraschino cherries; Sherry wine, to taste; Ice, for serving

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 Dessert

Ingredients

1 pineapple, peeled and cut into small pieces
4 bananas, sliced thin
5 oranges, peeled, quartered, and halved
½ pound canned or fresh Bartlett pears, cut into pieces
½ pound Malaga grapes, halved and seeds removed
1 small bottle Maraschino cherries
Sherry wine, to taste
Ice, for serving

Directions

Prepare

Combine the pineapple, bananas, oranges, pears, grapes, and Maraschino cherries in a large bowl.
Sweeten the mixture to taste and stir in the Sherry wine.

Serve

Serve very cold in a glass dish or individual glasses, topped with orange or lemon ice.

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 + grapetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together709 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,771 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple: Adds juicy body and bright tropical sweetness to the fruit mix.
Bananas: Add soft texture and natural sweetness, thickening the salad slightly as they break down.
Oranges: Contribute juice and mild acidity that balance the sweetness of the fruit.
Bartlett pears: Add firm, mildly sweet pieces that hold their shape in the salad.
Malaga grapes: Add juicy bursts of sweetness and a tender bite.

Swap the bartlett pear

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

Applefits better
Strawberryfits better
Figfits better
Bartlett pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, banana, orange, grape, 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.