Name: Cherry and Pineapple Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup shredded pineapple; 2 bananas, sliced; 1 cup stoned cherries; 1 cup chopped nuts; juice of ½ lemon; powdered sugar, to taste; cherry juice (for French dressing); crisp lettuce leaves

Why it works: Pineapple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Cherry and Pineapple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine shredded pineapple, sliced bananas, stoned cherries, chopped nuts, lemon juice, and powdered sugar.
Make a French dressing using cherry juice as the vinegar.
Serve the salad on crisp lettuce 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.

Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together733 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Pineapple + cherrytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together537 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Banana + cherrytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together187 recipes

Shared aroma: n-butyl acetate (pear, banana).
Cherry + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together242 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas: Add soft texture and natural sweetness to the fruit mixture.
Cherries: Add tart flavour and juicy texture that contrasts with the softer fruit.
Chopped nuts: Add crunch that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit and helps keep cut fruit fresh-looking.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, banana, lemon, sugar, cherry, lettuce):

Pistachiofits better
Chestnutfits better
Almondfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, banana, lemon, sugar, cherry, 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.