Name: Fancy Salad
Ingredients: 6 mellow sour apples; 6 oranges; ½ pound almonds; candied or fresh pineapples; lettuce leaves; mayonnaise or French dressing; English walnut halves; candied cherries

Why it works: Lettuce and walnut 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 ↓

Fancy Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and nuts

Cut the apples into small pieces.
Separate the pulp from the inner skin of the oranges.
Blanch the almonds, then chop them very fine.
Cut the pineapples into small dice.

Assemble and serve

Mix all the ingredients together.
Serve on lettuce leaves with mayonnaise or French dressing added just before serving.
Garnish with English walnut halves and candied cherries.

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.

Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together993 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Almond + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together210 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Apple + pineappletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together530 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the crisp, tart body and fresh bite of the salad.
Oranges: Add juicy sweetness and a bright citrus acidity.
Almonds: Contribute crunch and a nutty flavour throughout the salad.
Pineapples: Add sweetness and moist, tender pieces to the mix.
Mayonnaise or french dressing: Adds richness and moisture, dressing the fruit just before serving.

Swap the apple

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

Figfits better
Avocadofits better
Cherryfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, almond, pineapple, lettuce, walnut. 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.