Another small variation:

>perl -wMstrict -le
"my @a = ('apple 2', 'orange 5', 'pear 3');
 my @b = qw(apple apple apple  orange orange  pear);
 ;;
 my %fruits;
 ++$fruits{$_} for @b;
 ;;
 my @c;
 push @c, ($_) x $fruits{ (split)[0] } for @a;
 printf qq{'$_'  } for @c;
"
'apple 2'  'apple 2'  'apple 2'  'orange 5'  'orange 5'  'pear 3'
[download]