Skip to main content
Salad

Banana, Pineapple and Nut Salad

A chilled salad of sliced pineapple, diced bananas, nuts, and salad dressing served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pineapple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 733 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana, Pineapple and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Place the pineapple on lettuce leaves.

  2. Dice the bananas and mix with nuts and salad dressing.

  3. Place a generous heap of the banana and nut mixture on top of each slice of pineapple.

Serve

  1. Serve very cold.

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. Pineapple + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  4. Lettuce + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together579 recipes

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

  5. Pineapple + meattop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides a juicy, sweet-tart base that contrasts with the rich dressing.
Bananas
Add soft, sweet body and creamy texture to the topping.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture and richness, binding the banana and nut mixture together.
Nut meats
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour against the soft fruit.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, banana, meat):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, banana, meat. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes