Name: Cucumber Salad
Ingredients: large cucumbers; tomatoes; celery; green peppers; onion; lettuce; apples; walnuts; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the cucumbers and cut them in half lengthwise.
Hollow out the cucumbers and place them in ice water to crisp.
Chop the tomatoes, celery, cucumbers, green peppers, onion, lettuce, apples, and walnuts finely.
Mix the chopped ingredients well with mayonnaise dressing.
Fill the hollowed cucumbers with the mixture.
Serve each cucumber on a lettuce leaf.

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.

Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, celery, pepper, onion, lettuce, walnut):

Avocadofits better
Limefits better
Cherryfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, celery, pepper, onion, lettuce, walnut. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.