Name: Salad Dressing
Ingredients: ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ½ teaspoon white pepper; ⅓ cup olive oil; 2 tablespoons vinegar; scraped onion (optional); lettuce leaves

Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Dry the lettuce leaves and place them in a salad bowl.
Add ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt and ½ teaspoon of white pepper.
Pour in ⅓ cup of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of vinegar.
Mix the dressing well with a salad spoon.
Optionally, mix in some scraped onion with the lettuce leaves before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,226 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil: Provides fat and a smooth body that coats the lettuce leaves.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the dressing.
Lettuce leaves: Form the base of the salad that the dressing coats.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white pepper, olive, vinegar, lettuce):

Cucumberfits better
Mustardfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white pepper, olive, vinegar, 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.