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Dessert

Banana Salad

A fruit salad of banana, citrus, grapes, pecans, and whipped cream served in banana peel on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and grape work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Carefully peel the banana and scoop out most of the pulp.

  2. In a bowl, mix thinly sliced banana, shredded orange or grapefruit, seeded white grapes, and chopped pecans.

  3. Add whipped cream to the mixture and combine well.

  4. Fill the banana peel with the mixture and serve on lettuce leaves.

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. Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  2. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  4. Pecans + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

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

  5. Banana + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together198 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Banana
Provides the sweet, soft body of the salad and the shell for serving.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, creamy texture that binds the fruit.
Orange or grapefruit
Adds acidity and citrus brightness that balances the sweetness.
Pecans
Adds crunch and a toasted, nutty flavor against the soft fruit.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, orange, grape, 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.

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