Name: Chicken and Mushroom Salad
Ingredients: cooked chicken, diced; fresh mushrooms, chopped; hot water, a little; coarse sea salt, to taste; mayonnaise; lettuce leaves; stuffed olives, for garnish

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken and Mushroom Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

In a pan, combine diced chicken and chopped mushrooms with a little hot water and cook for 5 minutes.
Allow the mixture to cool, then combine the chicken and mushrooms in equal quantities.
Season with coarse sea salt and mix in mayonnaise.

Serve

Serve the salad on lettuce leaves and garnish with stuffed olives.

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.

Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,172 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).
Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,571 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,888 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).
Mushroom + lettucetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together292 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).