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Salad

Orange Peanut Salad

A salad of sliced banana rolled in peanuts, orange slices threaded with banana, served on lettuce with French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peanut and lettuce 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 ↓

Orange Peanut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the skin from the banana, then slice it lengthwise into quarters and crosswise into thirds.

  2. Roll the banana pieces in finely chopped peanuts.

  3. Peel the oranges and slice them crosswise, removing the center of each slice.

  4. Insert a piece of banana through each orange slice.

Serve

  1. Arrange the orange slices on lettuce leaves and pour French dressing over the 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. Peanut + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Banana + peanuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Orange + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together373 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

Banana
Provides sweetness and a soft texture that contrasts with the crisp orange and lettuce.
Peanuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor to the banana pieces.
Oranges
Supply juicy acidity and bright citrus aroma as the salad's base.
French dressing
Adds moisture, sweetness and acidity that flavor the whole salad.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, peanut, lettuce. 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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