Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: ¼ grapefruit; ⅓ orange; 12 strawberries; lettuce leaves; dressing

Why it works: Grapefruit and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the grapefruit and orange.
Arrange the peeled fruit on a lettuce leaf.
Top with dressing.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together118 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Grapefruit + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together233 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit: Adds bright, tart flavour and juicy segments to the salad.
Orange: Adds sweetness and juicy segments that balance the grapefruit's tartness.
Strawberries: Add sweetness and a soft, juicy texture to the salad.