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Salad

Banana Salad

A salad of sliced bananas, lettuce, boiled dressing, whipped cream, almonds, cherries, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut bananas in half lengthwise.

  2. Place bananas on lettuce leaves.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour boiled salad dressing over bananas.

  2. Add whipped cream and chopped almonds to the dressing.

  3. Garnish with Maraschino cherries and mint leaves.

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. Lettuce + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Lettuce + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Banana + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together198 recipes

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

  4. Banana + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the sweet, soft fruit base that the salad is built around.
Boiled salad dressing
Adds a tangy, creamy coating that moistens the bananas and carries flavour.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a rich, creamy texture to the dressing.
Chopped almonds
Add crunch and a toasty nutty contrast to the soft fruit.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, lettuce, cream, almond. 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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