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Salad

Banana Salad

A salad of diced bananas, walnuts, lettuce, parsley, and French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bananas

  1. Strip one section of the skin from the bananas.

  2. Remove the fruit and cut it into ½ inch cubes.

  3. Put the diced bananas in a deep dish and pour over French dressing.

  4. Let them stand in a cool place for 30 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the banana skins with the prepared fruit.

  2. Arrange on a bed of thoroughly washed and crisp lettuce leaves.

  3. Garnish with finely minced parsley and halves of English walnuts.

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.

  1. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  4. Banana + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together198 recipes

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

  5. Banana + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: 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 main fruit body, sweetness, and soft texture of the salad.
French dressing
Adds acidity and oil that flavour the diced fruit while it stands.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavour against the soft fruit.
Lettuce
Forms a crisp bed that gives contrast in texture and a fresh base.

The step that matters

Let the diced bananas stand in dressing. Bananas brown and soften quickly once cut, so the cubes should be dressed and chilled promptly to slow browning and keep their texture while they rest in the acidic dressing.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, lettuce, parsley):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, lettuce, parsley. 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.

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