Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 3 oranges; 2 small bananas; 2 figs; 2 tablespoons sugar

Why it works: Banana and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 104 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

3 oranges
2 small bananas
2 figs
2 tablespoons sugar

Directions

Remove peel and seeds from the oranges and cut each section into several pieces.
Slice the bananas and cut the figs into tiny pieces.
Mix the fruit lightly and add the sugar.

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 + figtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together104 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together407 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).
Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,241 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,102 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).