Skip to main content
Salad

Poinsettia Salad

A salad of pineapple, lettuce, cream cheese, pimento, mayonnaise, and a stuffed olive.

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

Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Poinsettia Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place a slice of Hawaiian pineapple on a lettuce leaf.

  2. Heat a knife and spread cream cheese or Neufchatel cheese over the pineapple.

  3. Arrange strips of pimento like the petals of a poinsettia over the cheese.

  4. Heap mayonnaise in the center and place a stuffed olive on top.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pineapple + cream cheesetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Pineapple + olivetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese or neufchatel cheese
Forms a soft, creamy layer that gives the salad richness and a mild tang.
Mayonnaise
Adds moisture and fat, giving the centerpiece a smooth, rich texture.
Hawaiian pineapple
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich cheese and mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Heat a knife and spread cream cheese or Neufchatel cheese over the pineapple.. Warming the knife lets it glide through cold, firm cheese, so the spread goes on smoothly without tearing or clumping the soft layer.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cream cheese, olive. 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