Name: Jamaica Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 1 tin grated African pineapple, drained; 3 large oranges; 2 bananas; 1 head of lettuce; 4 pints mayonnaise sauce

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

Jamaica Fruit Salad

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Remove the pips from the oranges and cut them into small pieces.
Peel and slice the bananas.

Mix and serve

Mix the pineapple, orange pieces, bananas, and mayonnaise together.
Serve the mixture on a bed of well-washed and drained lettuce leaves.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together733 recipes

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

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,664 recipes

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

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,118 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together271 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned 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

Mayonnaise sauce: Binds the fruit together and adds a creamy, rich texture.
Oranges: Add juicy sweetness and a bright, slightly acidic flavour.
Bananas: Add soft texture and natural sweetness to the salad.
African pineapple: Adds tangy sweetness and moisture to the mixture.

Flavor stand-ins for the lettuce

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

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Sweet potatoabout as good a flavor fit
Tomatoabout as good a flavor fit
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, orange, banana, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.