Name: Feuit And-nut Salad
Ingredients: 3 oranges; 3 bananas; ½ pound white grapes; ¼ pound English walnuts; 4 tablespoons oil; 2 tablespoons lemon juice; ½ teaspoon salt; Lettuce leaves for serving; French dressing or mayonnaise with whipped cream for serving

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 ↓

Feuit And-nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Peel and slice the oranges lengthwise.
Cut the bananas into thin slices.
Skin and seed the grapes.
Blanch and slice the walnuts.

Dress and serve

Serve the fruit on lettuce leaves, dressed with oil, lemon juice, and salt.
Garnish with lettuce leaves and serve immediately with French dressing or mayonnaise.

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).
Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,771 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Grape + walnuttop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,427 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges: Provide juicy segments and bright, sweet-tart flavor to the salad.
Bananas: Add soft, sweet body that contrasts with the firmer fruit and nuts.
White grapes: Add juiciness and mild sweetness to the salad.
English walnuts: Add crunch and a rich, slightly bitter note against the soft fruit.
Oil: Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the fruit and helps slow browning of cut fruit.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. Sliced bananas and peeled fruit brown quickly once exposed to air, so the fruit loses color and fresh flavor if left to stand. Dressing with lemon juice slows browning, but serving soon after preparing keeps the salad at its best.

Swap the lemon

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

Figfits better
Cranberryfits better
Pineapplefits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, banana, grape, walnut, lettuce, cream. 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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Feuit And-nut Salad