Name: Banana and Peanut Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup finely ground peanuts; 2 bananas, cut lengthwise; salad dressing of your choice; lettuce leaves

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

1 cup finely ground peanuts
2 bananas, cut lengthwise
salad dressing of your choice
lettuce leaves

Directions

Prepare

Finely grind the peanuts.
Cut the bananas lengthwise.

Assemble and serve

Roll the banana halves in the ground peanuts and salad dressing.
Place the dressed bananas on lettuce leaves.

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).
Peanut + bananatop 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 soft, sweet fruit base that the salad is built around.
Finely ground peanuts: Add a crunchy, nutty coating that contrasts with the soft banana.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and tang so the peanut coating clings to the banana.