Name: Pineapple Salad
Ingredients: 1 slice canned pineapple per person; Lettuce leaves; 1 bell pepper; ½ cup cottage cheese; Coarse sea salt to taste; Cayenne pepper to taste; English walnut meats, halved; Mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and walnut 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 ↓

Pineapple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Arrange a slice of canned pineapple on lettuce leaves for each person.
Stuff the bell pepper with cottage cheese seasoned with coarse sea salt and cayenne.
Slice the stuffed pepper and garnish the pineapple with the pepper slices and halved walnut meats.
Serve with mayonnaise dressing.

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 + walnuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pineapple + cottage cheesetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together271 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together533 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese: Provides a mild, creamy filling that carries the salt and cayenne seasoning.
Canned pineapple: Adds sweetness and juiciness that contrasts with the savory pepper filling.
English walnut meats: Adds crunch and a toasty, slightly bitter note against the soft cheese.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, pepper, cottage cheese, walnut, meat):

Avocadofits better
Limefits better
Lemonfits about as well
Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, pepper, cottage cheese, walnut, meat. 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.