Name: Salmon and Green Pea Salad
Ingredients: cold boiled salmon; cold boiled green peas; lettuce leaves; lemon juice; coarse sea salt; black pepper; mayonnaise dressing; grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmon and Green Pea Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Flake the cold boiled salmon.
Place the flaked salmon and cold boiled green peas on lettuce leaves.
Sprinkle generously with lemon juice, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.
Chill the salad on ice for at least one hour.
Before serving, coat the salad with mayonnaise dressing.
If desired, add grated Parmesan cheese on top.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Salmon + peastop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together375 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, peas, lettuce, pepper, parmesan cheese):

Avocadofits about as well
Lemonthe original
Limefits about as well
Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, peas, lettuce, pepper, parmesan cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.