Skip to main content
Salad

Banana Salad

A salad of sliced bananas coated in lemon juice and ground nuts, served on lettuce with mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Banana and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Roll the sliced bananas in lemon juice.

  2. Coat the bananas in ground nuts.

  3. Serve the bananas on lettuce leaves with mayonnaise dressing.

  4. Add chopped pineapple for extra flavor, if desired.

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. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + pineappletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. 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 base that the coating and dressing sit on.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and slows browning of cut banana.
Ground nuts
Add a crunchy, toasty coating that contrasts with the soft banana.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess, giving the salad moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Roll the sliced bananas in lemon juice. Cut banana browns quickly when exposed to air. Coating the slices in acidic lemon juice slows the enzymatic browning, so the coating step should follow right after slicing.

Swap the pineapple

The recipe marks pineapple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, lemon, nuts, lettuce):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, lemon, nuts, 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes