Name: Grape Fruit Cocktail
Ingredients: 1 large grapefruit; 3 oranges; 1 banana, diced; 4 figs, chopped; 1 cup seedless raisins; ½ cup Maraschino cherries; powdered sugar, to taste; 2 tablespoons cherry syrup

Why it works: Grapefruit and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 233 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Grape Fruit Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Cut the grapefruit in half and remove the pulp.

Mix and serve

In a bowl, mix the grapefruit pulp with the pulp of the oranges, diced banana, chopped figs, seedless raisins, and Maraschino cherries.
Sweeten the mixture with powdered sugar to taste and add the cherry syrup.
Serve very cold in lemonade cups with orange spoons.

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.

Grapefruit + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together233 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Banana + figtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together104 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Fig + cherrytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together81 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hydroxybutan-2-one (cheesy, buttery).
Banana + cherrytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together187 recipes

Shared aroma: n-butyl acetate (pear, banana).
Orange + figtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together407 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit: Provides the main tart, juicy base of the cocktail.
Oranges: Adds juice and mild sweetness that balances the grapefruit's bitterness.
Figs: Contribute soft texture and natural sweetness.
Seedless raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Maraschino cherries: Add sweetness and a bright, syrupy flavor.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grapefruit, orange, banana, fig, sugar, cherry, syrup):

Vanillafits better
Pineapplefits better
Apricotfits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grapefruit, orange, banana, fig, sugar, cherry, syrup. 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.