Name: Watercress Salad
Ingredients: 2 bunches watercress; 2 tablespoons vinegar; ½ teaspoon salt; a few grains paprika

Why it works: Watercress and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Watercress Salad

Ingredients

2 bunches watercress
2 tablespoons vinegar
½ teaspoon salt
a few grains paprika

Directions

Prepare the watercress

Wash and remove the roots from the watercress.
Drain and chill the watercress.
Arrange the watercress in a salad bowl.

Dress and serve

Mix the vinegar, salt, and paprika, then pour over the watercress.

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.

Watercress + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together465 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Watercress: Forms the leafy base of the salad, giving crisp texture and a peppery flavour.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the leaves and balances their peppery bite.

“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.