Name: Summer Salad
Ingredients: 2 small heads of tender lettuce; 1 pint cooked wax or string beans; 1 medium cucumber, thinly sliced; 1 young onion, finely sliced; 2 hard boiled eggs, sliced; a dash of cayenne pepper; mayonnaise or French dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber 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 ↓

Summer Salad

Ingredients

2 small heads of tender lettuce
1 pint cooked wax or string beans
1 medium cucumber, thinly sliced
1 young onion, finely sliced
2 hard boiled eggs, sliced
a dash of cayenne pepper
mayonnaise or French dressing

Directions

Tear the lettuce into pieces; do not cut.
In a large bowl, combine the lettuce, cooked beans, cucumber, onion, and hard boiled eggs.
Add a dash of cayenne pepper.
Cover the salad with mayonnaise or French dressing.

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.

Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together500 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Beans + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together602 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce: Forms the crisp, leafy base that holds the other ingredients together.
Hard boiled eggs: Add richness and body, giving the salad substance beyond the vegetables.
Mayonnaise or french dressing: Adds fat and moisture, coating the vegetables and carrying the flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, beans, cucumber, egg, pepper):

Spinachfits better
Beetrootfits better
Chivefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, beans, cucumber, egg, pepper. 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.