Name: Pineapple Salad
Ingredients: 1 ripe pineapple; Lettuce leaves; Lemon (for serving); Sweet cream (for serving)

Why it works: Lettuce and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,559 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pineapple Salad

Ingredients

1 ripe pineapple
Lettuce leaves
Lemon (for serving)
Sweet cream (for serving)

Directions

Peel the pineapple and slice it crossways.
Serve the pineapple slices on a bed of lettuce.
Garnish with lemon or drizzle with sweet cream.

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.

Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together271 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pineapple + creamtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,574 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Lettuce + creamtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple: Provides the sweet, juicy fruit that forms the main body of the salad.
Lettuce leaves: Offers a crisp, cool bed that contrasts with the soft, juicy fruit.