Skip to main content
Salad

Date, Nut, and Pineapple Salad

A chilled salad of dates, walnuts, apples, grapes, celery, and pineapple, dressed with mayonnaise or boiled dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and grape match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,659 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Date, Nut, and Pineapple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the apples, celery, walnuts, and dates.

  2. Halve the grapes and remove the seeds.

  3. Chill all ingredients thoroughly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the chopped ingredients with mayonnaise or boiled dressing.

  2. Place crisp lettuce leaves on individual plates.

  3. Top each lettuce leaf with a slice of pineapple.

  4. Add some of the mixture on top of the pineapple.

  5. Serve very cold.

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. Apple + grapetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  3. Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Pineapple + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the chopped salad mixture.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a slightly bitter, nutty contrast to the soft fruit.
Apples
Add crisp texture and mild tartness to the chopped mixture.
Mayonnaise or boiled dressing
Binds the chopped ingredients together and adds richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Chill all ingredients thoroughly. Cold ingredients keep the fats in the dressing firm and stop the mayonnaise from thinning or separating, so the salad stays creamy and crisp when served.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, walnut, celery, apple, grape, lettuce):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Cranberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, walnut, celery, apple, grape, 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes