Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 3 Pears, peeled and sliced; 1 lb large Plums, peeled and sliced; 2 ripe Apples, peeled and sliced; 4 large Bananas, peeled and sliced; 1 lb Castor Sugar; Whipped Cream or Glace Cherries; 6 oz Devonshire Cream; 3 tablespoons New Milk

Why it works: Pear and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

3 Pears, peeled and sliced
1 lb large Plums, peeled and sliced
2 ripe Apples, peeled and sliced
4 large Bananas, peeled and sliced
1 lb Castor Sugar
Whipped Cream or Glace Cherries
6 oz Devonshire Cream
3 tablespoons New Milk

Directions

Take a large glass dish and layer the fruit in this order: Oranges, Bananas, Pears, Apples, Plums, finishing with a layer of Oranges and one of Bananas.
Sprinkle sugar freely between each layer until all is used.
Top with Whipped Cream or Glace Cherries.
For the cream, whisk together Devonshire Cream and New Milk until well combined.

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.

Pear + plumtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pear + appletop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together649 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together404 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pear + bananatop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together87 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together435 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, plum, apple, sugar, cream, milk):

Vanillafits better
Apricotfits better
Peachfits better
Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, plum, apple, sugar, cream, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.