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Salad

Fruit and Nut Salad

A salad of bananas, oranges, walnuts, and mayonnaise served on lettuce with lemon garnish.

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

Fruit and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the bananas and chop them.

  2. Cut the oranges into small squares.

Make the salad

  1. Combine the chopped bananas, orange squares, walnuts, and mayonnaise in a bowl.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and paprika.

Serve

  1. Serve on a lettuce leaf garnished with a slice of lemon.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

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

  4. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  5. 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

Bananas
Provide sweetness and a soft, creamy texture to the salad.
Oranges
Add juicy sweetness and fresh citrus aroma.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavor that contrasts the soft fruit.
Mayonnaise
Binds the fruit and nuts together and adds fat for a creamy moisture.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, walnut, lettuce, 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.

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