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Salads

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber 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 ↓

Salads

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine shredded lettuce, chopped onions, and sliced cucumbers in a bowl.

  2. Stuff tomatoes with a mixture of celery and cucumbers.

  3. Mix shredded lettuce with green peppers, pimentoes, and chopped nuts.

  4. Toss lettuce with asparagus tips and sliced tomatoes.

  5. Combine beets, celery, cabbage, and shredded lettuce.

  6. Mix shredded cabbage with chopped beets and celery.

  7. Combine cucumbers, new onions, and radishes.

  8. Toss lettuce with sliced tomatoes.

  9. Mix chopped raw carrots, shredded cabbage, and chopped celery.

  10. Combine chopped carrots and nuts.

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.

  1. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Lettuce + asparagustop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, onion, cucumber, tomato, celery, pepper, asparagus):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, onion, cucumber, tomato, celery, pepper, asparagus. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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