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Salad

Banana Croquette Salad

A salad of banana croquettes coated in mayonnaise and peanuts, served on lettuce with fruit salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Banana Croquette Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the bananas and cut them crosswise.

  2. Trim the ends to shape them like croquettes.

Coat and serve

  1. Moisten the banana pieces with mayonnaise.

  2. Roll the pieces in chopped peanuts.

  3. Place each piece on a lettuce leaf.

  4. Cover partially with mayonnaise or fruit salad dressing.

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 + 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

Ripe bananas
Provide the main body of the salad, with soft sweet flesh that holds its shape when trimmed.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, helping the peanut coating adhere and giving a creamy finish.
Chopped peanuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft banana.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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