Name: Tutti Frutti
Ingredients: 1 pint brandy; various fruits (raspberries, strawberries, apricots, cherries, pineapples); sugar (equal quantity to the fruit)

Why it works: Apricot and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 377 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tutti Frutti

Ingredients

1 pint brandy
various fruits (raspberries, strawberries, apricots, cherries, pineapples)
sugar (equal quantity to the fruit)

Directions

Pour 1 pint of brandy into a stone jar.
Add various fruits as they come into the market.
For each quart of fruit, add the same quantity of sugar.
Stir the mixture each morning until all the fruit has been added.

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.

Apricot + pineappletop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together377 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Brandy + apricottop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together513 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Brandy + pineappletop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together298 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,630 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,841 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Brandy: Acts as the preserving liquid that keeps the fruit stable as it steeps.
Fruit: Provides the flavour and aroma that the spirit and sugar draw out over time.
Sugar: Sweetens the mixture and helps draw juice out of the fruit, forming a syrup.