Name: Bean Salad
Ingredients: 1 can French string beans; stiff mayonnaise; Spanish onions, sliced thin; 2 hard-boiled eggs, sliced; crisp white lettuce leaves

Why it works: Beans and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and assemble

Drain and wipe dry the French string beans.
Mix the beans with stiff mayonnaise.
Place the mixture in the center of a round platter.

Garnish and serve

Garnish with sliced Spanish onions and hard-boiled eggs, alternating with crisp 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.

Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together500 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,242 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Beans + eggtop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,030 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

French string beans: Provide the main body and bulk of the salad.
Stiff mayonnaise: Binds the beans and adds richness and moisture to the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add creamy texture and mild richness as a garnish.