Name: Banana and Nut Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup almonds; 1 cup walnuts; 2 bananas; ½ cup mayonnaise; 1 teaspoon mustard; 2 tablespoons apple, chopped; 1 stalk young celery, chopped; crisp lettuce leaves

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Banana and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Finely grind the almonds and walnuts.

Assemble and serve

Cut the bananas in half and generously cover them with mayonnaise mixed with mustard.
Sprinkle the ground nuts over the bananas and place them on a plate of crisp lettuce.
Mix the chopped apple and celery with mayonnaise and place about 2 tablespoons on each plate.

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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Banana + appletop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together435 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together993 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds: Ground nuts add a crunchy, toasty texture and nutty flavour to the salad.
Walnuts: Ground walnuts add richness, body and a slightly bitter nutty note.
Bananas: Halved bananas form the sweet, soft base of the salad.
Mayonnaise: Mayonnaise adds fat and creaminess, binding the nuts and moistening the fruit and vegetables.
Mustard: Mustard adds sharp, acidic bite that balances the sweetness of the bananas.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, walnut, banana, mustard, celery, lettuce):

Avocadofits better
Limefits better
Figfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, walnut, banana, mustard, celery, lettuce. 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.