Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 2 lbs malaga grapes; ½ lb dates; 2 oranges; 1 grapefruit; 2 apples; 4 bananas; ½ lb figs; ½ cup chopped nuts; mayonnaise

Why it works: Orange and grapefruit 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 ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove seeds from the grapes and dates.
Cut all the fruit into small pieces.

Combine and serve

Combine the fruit in a large bowl.
Add chopped nuts and mix gently.
Serve with mayonnaise.

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.

Orange + grapefruittop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together233 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together104 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together318 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Malaga grapes: Add juicy sweetness and a soft, moist texture to the salad.
Dates: Contribute concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Figs: Add soft texture and mild sweetness to the fruit mix.
Bananas: Add creamy texture and sweetness that soften the salad.
Oranges: Add acidity and fresh citrus brightness that balance the sweetness.
Chopped nuts: Add crunch that contrasts with the soft fruit.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grape, dates, orange, grapefruit, apple, banana, fig):

Almondfits better
Walnutfits better
Pecansfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, dates, orange, grapefruit, apple, banana, fig. 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.