Name: Cucumber Salad
Ingredients: 1 cucumber; equal parts of sweetbreads, cucumbers, and English walnuts; mayonnaise; lettuce leaves; 1 radish

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the cucumber and place it in ice water.
Cut the cucumber into 3-inch lengths and scoop out the inside to form cups.
Mix equal parts of sweetbreads, cucumbers, and English walnuts with mayonnaise.
Fill the cucumber cups with the salad mixture.
Set the cups on lettuce leaves.
Top each salad with a teaspoon of mayonnaise and place a radish cut to resemble a rose 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.

Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together58 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cucumber + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together380 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).