Name: Banana Salad
Ingredients: 8 large ripe bananas; Mayonnaise; 1 small head lettuce; 3 cups parched peanuts

Why it works: Lettuce and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

8 large ripe bananas
Mayonnaise
1 small head lettuce
3 cups parched peanuts

Directions

Prepare

Hull the peanuts and grind them finely.
Peel the bananas and dip them in mayonnaise.

Coat and serve

Roll the bananas in the ground peanuts.
Serve with lettuce on individual salad plates.

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 + peanuttop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together170 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Banana + peanuttop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together308 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Banana + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together198 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas: Provide the soft, sweet fruit that forms the body of the salad.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and moisture and gives the peanuts a sticky surface to cling to.
Parched peanuts: Supply crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour on the outside of the bananas.