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Banana Salad

A salad of peeled bananas rolled in egg white, coated with peanuts or walnuts, drizzled with mayonnaise, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peanut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the bananas and remove the skin.

  2. Roll the bananas in the egg white.

  3. Coat the bananas with the ground peanuts or walnuts.

Serve

  1. Drizzle with mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Serve on a lettuce leaf.

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. Peanut + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

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

  2. Banana + peanuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Banana + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Egg + peanuttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the main body and natural sweetness of the salad.
Egg white
Acts as a sticky binder so the nut coating adheres to the bananas.
Ground peanuts or walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour against the soft fruit.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds richness and creamy moisture that balances the fruit's sweetness.

The step that matters

Coating the bananas in egg white. Egg white must cover the banana evenly so the ground nuts stick. Gaps leave bare fruit that browns quickly once peeled and exposed to air.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, peanut, 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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