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Pineapple Salad

A salad of diced pineapple, celery, and mayonnaise served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Pineapple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and dice the pineapple.

  2. Wash and finely chop the celery.

Make the salad

  1. Whip the cream and egg together to make mayonnaise.

  2. Mix part of the mayonnaise with the pineapple and celery.

  3. Place the mixture on lettuce leaves.

  4. Top with remaining mayonnaise and garnish with celery tips.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pineapple + celerytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Whipped with the egg to form a rich, creamy mayonnaise that coats the fruit.
Egg
Emulsifies with the cream so the mayonnaise holds together and thickens.
Pineapple
Provides sweetness and juicy texture that contrasts with the rich dressing.
Celery
Adds a crisp texture and a mild, fresh flavour to the salad.

The step that matters

Whipping the cream and egg into mayonnaise. The cream and egg must be whipped until thick and smooth so they emulsify into a stable dressing. If under-whipped, the mayonnaise stays thin and runny and will not coat the pineapple and celery properly.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, cream, egg, 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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