Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 6 bananas, sliced; 1 pineapple, diced; 1 box strawberries or 6 peaches; 3 oranges; coconut, shredded; sugar

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

Assemble

Layer sliced bananas in a cut glass dish.
Layer diced pineapple.
Layer strawberries (or peaches).
Layer oranges.
Sprinkle shredded coconut over each layer.
Sprinkle sugar over each layer.
Top with more shredded coconut.

Serve

Serve with sponge cake or any light cake.

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).
Banana + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together549 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Pineapple + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together651 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pineapple + peachtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together168 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Banana + peachtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together130 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

Bananas: Add soft sweetness and a creamy texture as they are layered through the dish.
Pineapple: Adds bright acidity and juiciness that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Strawberries: Contribute juice, tartness, and fruity aroma to the layers.
Oranges: Add citrusy acidity and juice that moistens the layers.
Sugar: Sweetens the fruit and draws out its juices as it sits.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, pineapple, peach, coconut, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Mangofits better
Apricotfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, pineapple, peach, coconut, sugar. 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.