Elegant? Hard to say...

Smartmatch:

perl -e 'my @t=qw/banana plum apple strawberry pea/;my $fruit="apple";
+print (($fruit~~\@t)?"yes":"no");'
yes
[download]

Undef hash:

perl -e 'my @t=qw/banana plum apple strawberry pea/;my $fruit="apple";
+my %in;undef @in{@t};print ((exists $in{$fruit})?"yes":"no");'
yes
[download]

for,next,last:

perl -e 'my @t=qw/banana plum apple strawberry pea/;my $fruit="apple";
+for my $f (@t) {next if $fruit ne $f;print "yes";last}'
yes
[download]

grep?

#no, not efficient
[download]