Name: Endive, Banana and Pimento Salad
Ingredients: 4 bananas, cut into thick slices; 1 head endive or escarole; 1 can pimento, cut into strips; French dressing

Why it works: Banana and endive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Endive, Banana and Pimento Salad

Ingredients

4 bananas, cut into thick slices
1 head endive or escarole
1 can pimento, cut into strips
French dressing

Directions

In a bowl, mix the banana slices and pimento strips.
Pour French dressing over the mixture.
Serve the salad on a bed of endive or escarole.

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.

Banana + endivetop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas: Provide the sweet, soft fruit base that makes up most of the salad.
Endive or escarole: Forms a crisp, bitter-leaved bed that contrasts with the soft banana and pimento.
Pimento: Adds a mild, sweet peppery flavour and bright colour to the salad.
French dressing: Adds acidity and oil that moisten the fruit and bring the flavours together.

“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.