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Salad

Apple, Banana and English Walnut Salad

A salad of lettuce, sliced apples, bananas, broken English walnuts, topped with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Apple, Banana and English Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the lettuce.

  2. Pare and slice the bananas and apples.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the sliced bananas and apples on the lettuce.

  2. Sprinkle with broken walnuts.

  3. Top with a liberal amount of mayonnaise.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Banana + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lettuce + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together198 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + bananatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together508 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess, coating the fruit and walnuts with richness.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour against the soft fruit.
Apples
Provide crisp texture and tart, fresh flavour.
Bananas
Add sweetness and a soft, creamy texture.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, lettuce, banana. 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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