Name: Novelty Salad
Ingredients: 2 apples, chopped finely; powdered sugar; English walnut meats; 2 bananas, sliced finely; 2 oranges, sliced finely; juice of 2 lemons; granulated sugar

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Novelty Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Layer the salad

In a small salad dish, layer the chopped apples.
Sprinkle a layer of powdered sugar over the apples.
Add a layer of English walnut pieces.
Layer the sliced bananas on top.
Sprinkle more powdered sugar over the bananas.
Add the sliced oranges.
Pour the lemon juice thickened with granulated sugar over the salad.

Chill and serve

Chill thoroughly before serving.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together435 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the fruit base and crisp texture that holds the layers together.
Bananas: Add soft texture and natural sweetness that blends with the powdered sugar.
Oranges: Contribute juicy segments and bright citrus flavour to the layers.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens flavour and slows browning of cut fruit.
English walnut meats: Add crunch and a nutty, toasted flavour against the soft fruit.

Swap the walnut

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits about as well
Pistachiofits about as well
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, meat, banana, orange, lemon. 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.