Name: Pineapple Salad
Ingredients: 1 pineapple, shredded; 1 cup white grapes, skinned and seeded; 1 cup celery, cut into small pieces; 1½ cups chestnut nuts, finely shredded; cream mayonnaise; lettuce leaves; red cherries for garnish

Why it works: Chestnut and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pineapple Salad

Ingredients

1 pineapple, shredded
1 cup white grapes, skinned and seeded
1 cup celery, cut into small pieces
1½ cups chestnut nuts, finely shredded
cream mayonnaise
lettuce leaves
red cherries for garnish

Directions

Shred the pineapple and combine it with the white grapes and celery in a bowl.
Add the finely shredded chestnut nuts to the mixture.
Moisten the salad with cream mayonnaise and mix well.
Serve the salad on lettuce leaves and garnish with red cherries.

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.

Chestnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together64 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together709 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Celery + chestnuttop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together231 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together271 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple: Provides the main fruit body and sweetness, with juice that moistens the salad.
Cream mayonnaise: Adds fat and moisture, binding the fruit and nuts into a creamy dressing.
Chestnut nuts: Add a firm, crunchy texture that contrasts with the soft fruit.
White grapes: Add juicy sweetness and a soft texture to the salad.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, grape, celery, chestnut, cream, lettuce):

Cashew nutfits better
Pistachiofits better
Almondfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, grape, celery, chestnut, cream, 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.