Name: Pineapple Salad
Ingredients: 1 pineapple; 1 cup strawberries; Lettuce leaves; Salad dressing

Why it works: Pineapple and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 271 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Pineapple Salad

Ingredients

1 pineapple
1 cup strawberries
Lettuce leaves
Salad dressing

Directions

Prepare

Cut the pineapple into small pieces.
Wash the tender leaves of lettuce.

Assemble and serve

Spread the pineapple pieces on the lettuce leaves.
Top with very ripe strawberries.
Serve with salad 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.

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 sweetness and juicy, acidic brightness that balances the salad.
Strawberries: Add sweetness, aroma and a soft, juicy texture when very ripe.

“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.