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Salad

French Salad

A fruit salad of sliced pineapple, bananas, and oranges topped with nuts and French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and banana 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 ↓

French Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel and slice the oranges, pineapple, and bananas into thin slices.

Layer and serve

  1. Arrange the fruit in layers: bananas first, then oranges, then pineapple, and repeat with remaining oranges.

  2. Sprinkle your favorite nuts over the layered fruit.

  3. Serve with French 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.

  1. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Banana + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

  5. Pineapple + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Add sweetness and a soft, creamy texture to the layers.
Oranges
Add juiciness and bright acidity that balances the sweetness.
Pineapple
Adds tart sweetness and juicy structure to the layers.
French dressing
Adds acidity and fat that coat and season the fruit.

The step that matters

Slicing and layering the bananas. Cut banana flesh oxidises quickly and turns brown when exposed to air. Slice the bananas close to serving time so the layers look fresh and the dressing is added just before serving.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, banana, orange. 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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