Play Food Matchmaker With Fruits, Other Ingredients

Helpful hints for matching fruits with herbs, spices and other ingredients are dotted throughout “Nicole Routhier’s Fruit Cookbook” (Workman, $15.95). Here’s a sampling:

Apples

Crisp sweet apples are wonderful with cheese, especially Gouda, Gruyere and Cheddar. They hold their own against assertive foods like game, smoked meat and fish, horseradish, cabbage and wild mushrooms. But they can also be subtle enough to let delicacies such as scallops, shrimp, blueberries and cream take center stage.

Bananas

Bananas and plantains match up beautifully with both hard and soft cheeses, cured meats and chocolate. Herbs and spices are also compatible ingredients, as are La Grande Passion (Armagnac and passion fruit liqueur), orange liqueur, vinegars of all kinds and sweet potatoes.

Cherries

The seemingly unusual pairing of cherries and black pepper works quite well, especially in a sauce for beef, pork or game. Ricotta cheese, mascarpone and sweet cream all bring out the gentle tartness of ripe cherries. And such herbs as chives and sage, and nuts such as almonds, highlight this fruit’s good qualities.

Grapes

Grapes are a natural complement to cheeses like feta and Cheddar. They’re also good with pork and prosciutto. Try adding grapes to a green salad tossed with a walnut-oil-based vinaigrette.

Plums

The musky perfume of ripe plums blends well with all berries, especially blueberries. Plums are surprisingly good with potatoes (sweet and white). Try plums with cured meats such as bacon, pancetta and prosciutto for a sweet and salty treat.