Name: Banana and Peanut Salad
Ingredients: 2 bananas; ½ cup ground peanuts; lettuce leaves; mayonnaise or boiled dressing

Why it works: Peanut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Banana and Peanut Salad

Ingredients

2 bananas
½ cup ground peanuts
lettuce leaves
mayonnaise or boiled dressing

Directions

Wash the bananas, remove the skin, and slice them into 1-inch pieces.
Roll the banana slices in ground peanuts.
Serve on lettuce leaves and moisten with mayonnaise or boiled dressing.

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.

Peanut + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together170 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Banana + peanuttop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together308 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Banana + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together198 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas: Provide the sweet, soft fruit base of the salad.
Ground peanuts: Add a crunchy, nutty coating that contrasts with the soft banana.
Mayonnaise or boiled dressing: Adds moisture and richness to the salad.