Name: Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 2 oranges; 2 bananas; 1 dozen English walnuts; Lettuce; Mayonnaise

Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and nuts

Remove seeds from the oranges and cut them into thin slices, then cut the slices into small pieces.
Peel and slice the bananas thinly.
Chop the walnut meats into small pieces.

Assemble and serve

Arrange lettuce cups on each plate.
Layer the bananas and oranges in alternate layers in the lettuce cups.
Top each layer with 2 teaspoons of mayonnaise and sprinkle the chopped walnuts on top.
Serve with hot unsweetened wafers, oblongs of toast, or thinly sliced buttered graham bread sandwiches.

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.

Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Banana + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together198 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Orange + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Banana + walnuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together508 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise: Adds fat and creamy moisture that coats the fruit and binds the layers.
English walnuts: Add crunch and a rich, slightly bitter contrast to the sweet fruit.
Bananas: Provide soft texture and natural sweetness.
Oranges: Add juicy acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness.