Name: Sesame Salad
Ingredients: 2 heads of butter lettuce, washed and torn into bite-sized pieces; 1/4 cup toasted sesame seeds; 1/4 cup sliced water chestnuts; 1/4 cup Almonsen Sprinkle; Tarragon Dressing (see below)

Why it works: Sesame and water chestnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 112 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, tree nuts, sesame (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

2 heads of butter lettuce, washed and torn into bite-sized pieces
1/4 cup toasted sesame seeds
1/4 cup sliced water chestnuts
1/4 cup Almonsen Sprinkle
Tarragon Dressing (see below)

Directions

Toss all ingredients together with just enough dressing to coat all. Serve immediately.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Sesame + water chestnuttop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together112 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + tarragontop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together278 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + sesametop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together193 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Lettuce + water chestnuttop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together45 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + tarragontop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,193 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lettuce, sesame, water chestnut):

Gingerbetter flavor fit
Celerybetter flavor fit
Corianderbetter flavor fit
Tarragonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lettuce, sesame, water chestnut. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).