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Salad

Apple and Banana Salad

A salad of sliced apples and bananas served on lettuce with French dressing and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Apple and Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scoop out two balls from peeled apples using a French vegetable cutter.

  2. Prepare banana balls in the same way.

  3. Cover both with lemon juice to prevent discoloration.

Serve

  1. Serve on lettuce leaves with French 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. Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

  5. Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the firm, crisp, juicy texture of the salad balls.
Ripe bananas
Add natural sweetness and a soft, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Its acidity slows browning of the cut fruit surfaces.

The step that matters

Cover both with lemon juice. Cut apples and bananas begin to brown quickly as their surfaces react with oxygen. Coating them promptly with lemon juice adds acidity that slows this enzymatic browning, so the balls keep a fresh appearance until serving.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, banana, lemon, 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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