Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 3 oranges; 1 banana; 1 cup shredded pineapple; a few candied cherries; 1 cup white grapes, halved; 1 cup granulated sugar; whipped cream; 1 candied cherry or English walnut for garnish

Why it works: Banana and pineapple 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

Dice the oranges and banana.
In a bowl, combine the diced oranges, banana, shredded pineapple, halved grapes, and candied cherries.
Sprinkle granulated sugar over the fruit mixture.

Serve

Serve in sherbet glasses topped with a dollop of whipped cream and garnish with a candied cherry or English walnut.

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.

Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together733 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together709 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Pineapple + cherrytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together537 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Banana + cherrytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together187 recipes

Shared aroma: n-butyl acetate (pear, banana).
Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 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

What each ingredient does

Oranges: Provide juice and bright citrus acidity that balances the sweetness of the salad.
Banana: Adds soft body and creamy texture to the fruit mixture.
Granulated sugar: Sweetens the fruit and draws out some of its juices as it sits.
Whipped cream: Adds richness and a light, creamy fat layer to the fruit.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, pineapple, grape, sugar, cream, cherry):

Vanillafits better
Strawberryfits better
Figfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, pineapple, grape, sugar, cream, cherry. 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.