Name: Cherry Salad
Ingredients: Maraschino cherries; hazelnut meat; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce; English walnut meats; juice from cherries

Why it works: Lettuce and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cherry Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Drain the liquor from the Maraschino cherries.
Blanch hazelnut meat in hot water and remove the skin.
Fill the cavity of each cherry with a cold hazelnut.
Chill the prepared cherries on ice until ready to serve.
Serve the cherries on a bed of lettuce and cover with mayonnaise dressing.
Alternatively, mix Maraschino cherries with English walnut meats and a little cherry juice, then add French or mayonnaise dressing.

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.

Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Hazelnut + lettucetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together21 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together112 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Meat + walnuttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,035 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).