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Banana Salad

A salad of sliced banana on lettuce with sweet peppers, mayonnaise, nuts, and a whipped cream dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Split the banana lengthwise and lay it on a lettuce leaf.

  2. Cover the banana with chopped sweet peppers.

  3. Add mayonnaise dressing on top.

  4. Sprinkle chopped nuts over the dressing.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine 3 tablespoons of boiled dressing with ½ pint of whipped cream.

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. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Lettuce + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Banana + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Banana
Provides the sweet, soft base that the toppings sit on.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture to the dressing.
Boiled dressing
Supplies a tangy, creamy base that thickens the whipped cream mixture.
Chopped nuts
Adds crunch that contrasts with the soft banana and dressing.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, lettuce, pepper, cream):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, lettuce, pepper, cream. 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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