Name: Fruit and Nut Salad
Ingredients: 2 large oranges; 2 apples; 1 banana; a few white grapes; 12 almonds; 12 English walnuts or shell-barks; sugar (optional)

Why it works: Apple and grape 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

Directions

Prepare

Remove the pulp and juice from the oranges.
Cut the apples, banana, white grapes, and nuts into small pieces.

Mix and serve

Mix all the ingredients together. Add sugar if desired.
Serve in half orange skins. Chill in the refrigerator before serving.

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.

Apple + grapetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,659 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together435 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together993 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,125 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges: Provide juice and pulp that moisten the salad and add bright acidity.
Apples: Add crisp texture and body that holds up in the fruit mixture.
Banana: Adds soft texture and natural sweetness to the mixture.
Almonds: Add crunch and a toasted, nutty flavour to the salad.
English walnuts or shell-barks: Add crunch and a rich, slightly bitter nuttiness to the salad.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, apple, banana, grape, almond, sugar):

Hazelnutfits better
Pistachiofits about as well
Chestnutfits about as well
Walnutthe original

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