Name: Pineapple and Pimento Salad
Ingredients: 6 slices of pineapple; Tender lettuce leaves; 3 pimentos; French or mayonnaise 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 and Pimento Salad

Ingredients

6 slices of pineapple
Tender lettuce leaves
3 pimentos
French or mayonnaise dressing

Directions

Place tender, crisp lettuce leaves in a circle on a salad plate.
Lay a slice of pineapple in the center of each group of leaves.
Cut pimentos into strips and form a star from the strips in the center of each slice of pineapple.
Pour either French or mayonnaise dressing over all.

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 a juicy, acidic contrast to the salad.
Pimentos: Add mild sweetness, color and a soft, slightly tangy flavor.
Lettuce leaves: Form a crisp base that holds the pineapple and adds freshness.
French or mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture, richness and a creamy or tangy coating over the salad.

“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.