Name: Juliet Salad
Ingredients: 1 pineapple, diced; ½ cup mayonnaise; Lettuce leaves; Cropped nuts

Why it works: Pineapple and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 271 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Juliet Salad

Ingredients

1 pineapple, diced
½ cup mayonnaise
Lettuce leaves
Cropped nuts

Directions

Prepare

Cut the pineapple into small dice.
Mix the diced pineapple with mayonnaise.

Serve

Serve the mixture in lettuce cups.
Sprinkle cropped nuts over the pineapple.

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.

Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together271 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Lettuce + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together174 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Pineapple + nutstop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together162 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple: Adds juiciness, sweetness and a bright acidic flavour to the salad.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and creaminess, coating the pineapple pieces and binding the salad together.