Name: Salad of Yam
Ingredients: 5 cups of cooked yam; 2 onions thin slices; 1 sauce cup for salad; 1 lettuce; 2 average tomatos 2 hard-boiled eggs

Why it works: Yam and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 7 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

Cut the yam in slices.
In a dish, mix the yam, onion and sauce.
Serve cold with lettuce, tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs cut in sections.

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.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

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.

Yam + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together7 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,654 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together20,622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,562 recipes

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

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together5,468 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Yam: Forms the bulk of the salad and absorbs the dressing, giving a soft, starchy texture.
Onions: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the sauce and yam.
Hard-boiled eggs: Adds richness and a firm, creamy texture alongside the yam.
Tomatoes (in the method): Adds moisture and mild acidity that brightens the salad.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (yam, sauce, lettuce, tomato, egg):

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Cucumberbetter flavor fit
Sweet potatobetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against yam, sauce, lettuce, tomato, egg. 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).

“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.