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Salad

Candle Salad

A salad featuring pineapple, banana, lettuce, bell pepper rings, and a cherry, served with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Candle Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the green peppers into round rings and remove the seeds. Cut each ring in half for handles.

  2. Place a lettuce leaf flat on a plate and lay one slice of pineapple on it.

Assemble the candle

  1. Cut a bit off each end of the banana and stand it upright in the center of the pineapple.

  2. Stick the red cherry on top of the banana with a toothpick and fasten the handles with toothpicks.

  3. Place mayonnaise on the side of the lettuce leaf, which serves as the base of the candle.

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 + cherrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Banana + cherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together187 recipes

    Shared aroma: n-butyl acetate (pear, banana).

  4. Lettuce + cherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Pepper + cherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise
Adds creamy richness and a tangy flavor that complements the fruit.
Pineapple
Provides a sweet, juicy base that holds up the banana candle.
Banana
Forms the upright candle body, giving a soft, sweet fruit center.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, pepper, banana, cherry. 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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