Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 1 pineapple, sliced; 4 oranges, peeled and sectioned; 4 bananas, sliced; 1 cup strawberries, hulled; French dressing; Crisp lettuce leaves; 2 fresh macaroons; Cream cheese

Why it works: Pineapple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Slice the pineapple.
Peel and section the oranges.
Add the sliced bananas and hulled strawberries.

Dress and serve

Cover the fruit with French dressing.
Serve in a glass bowl lined with crisp lettuce leaves.
Press together the macaroons with a layer of cream cheese between.

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.

Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together733 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together271 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Banana + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together198 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

Bananas: Add soft sweetness and a creamy texture to the fruit salad.
Strawberries: Add sweetness and a bright aroma to the fruit mix.
Cream cheese: Adds richness and fat that binds the macaroons together.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, orange, banana, cream cheese):

Capsicumfits better
Lettucethe original
Sweet potatofits about as well
Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, orange, banana, cream cheese. 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.