Name: Fruit and Nut Salad
Ingredients: 1 orange, sliced; 1 apple, sliced; 1 banana, sliced; mayonnaise dressing; chopped nuts or Grape Nuts, for sprinkling

Why it works: Apple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fruit and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the orange, apple, and banana.
Arrange the sliced fruit on a plate.
Drizzle with mayonnaise dressing.
Sprinkle chopped nuts or Grape Nuts on top.

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.

Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together435 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Banana + nutstop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together135 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).
Orange + nutstop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together280 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Orange: Adds bright, sweet-tart flavour and juiciness to the salad.
Apple: Adds crisp texture and tartness that contrasts with the softer fruit.
Banana: Adds creamy sweetness and a soft texture.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and creaminess that coats the fruit and binds the flavours.