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Pear Salad

A fruit salad of sliced pears, bananas, walnuts, and French dressing, served cold in lettuce cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pear Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare, core, and slice the pears thinly.

  2. Mix pears with sliced bananas and broken walnut meats.

  3. Add enough French dressing to make the mixture slightly moist.

Serve

  1. Prepare shortly before serving and serve cold in bleached lettuce cups.

  2. For a sweet dressing, beat the egg yolks, then mix in powdered sugar, lemon juice, and tart fruit juice.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Pear + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pear + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

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

  4. Pear + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 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

Ripe pears
Form the main body of the salad and provide its fresh, juicy texture.
Sliced bananas
Add softness and sweetness to the mixture.
Broken english walnut meats
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sweet dressing, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dressing and dissolves smoothly into the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Prepare shortly before serving. Sliced pears and bananas brown quickly once cut and exposed to air, so holding them too long dulls colour and softens texture. Serving soon after slicing keeps the salad fresh-looking and crisp.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, banana, walnut, meat, egg, sugar, lettuce):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, banana, walnut, meat, egg, sugar, 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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