Name: Banana Salad
Ingredients: small sized bananas; chopped walnut meats; mayonnaise dressing; shredded lettuce leaves

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 ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

small sized bananas
chopped walnut meats
mayonnaise dressing
shredded lettuce leaves

Directions

Remove the skins from the bananas.
Roll the bananas in chopped walnut meats.
Cover the bananas with mayonnaise dressing.
Chill the salad on ice.
Serve on shredded 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.

Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Banana + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together198 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Banana + walnuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together508 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,035 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together579 recipes

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