Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 4 oranges; 8 bananas; 1 small can sliced pineapple; powdered sugar; 1 cup pineapple syrup; ½ pint sherry wine (optional)

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

Peel the oranges, remove the seeds, and cut them into small pieces.
Peel the bananas and slice them.
Cut the pineapple into small pieces, discarding the hard core.

Assemble and serve

Combine all the fruits in a glass bowl.
Sprinkle the layers with powdered sugar.
Add 1 cup of pineapple syrup and pour over ½ pint of sherry wine, if desired.

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).
Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together228 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges: Provide juicy, acidic fruit pieces that add brightness to the salad.
Bananas: Add body and creamy sweetness to the fruit mixture.
Sliced pineapple: Contributes sweetness and tangy juice that moistens the salad.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the fruit and draws out some juice as it dissolves.
Pineapple syrup: Adds moisture and sweetness that soaks into the fruit.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, pineapple, sugar, syrup, sherry, wine):

Vanillafits better
Strawberryfits better
Pearfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, pineapple, sugar, syrup, sherry, wine. 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.