Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 1 can pineapple; 3 oranges; 3 bananas; 3 peaches; 1 cup maraschino cherries; 1-2 cups walnuts; lemon juice; sugar; mayonnaise

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Dice the pineapple, oranges, bananas, peaches, and walnuts.
In a bowl, mix all the diced fruits and maraschino cherries.

Make the dressing and combine

Thin the mayonnaise with pineapple juice, adding plenty of lemon juice and sugar to taste.
Mix the dressing well into the fruit mixture.
Serve the salad in halved cantaloupes.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together733 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise: Forms a creamy, rich dressing that coats the fruit and adds fat.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the cut fruit fresh-tasting.
Walnuts: Add crunch and a contrast in texture to the soft fruit.
Maraschino cherries: Add sweetness and bright color to the salad.

Swap the walnut

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

Almondfits better
Pistachiofits better
Chestnutfits better
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, orange, banana, peach, lemon, 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.