Name: Lettuce Salad
Ingredients: Lettuce leaves; Oil; Vinegar; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Chopped chives; Chopped parsley; Chopped fresh tarragon

Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and drain the lettuce leaves, then dry them thoroughly.
Rub a salad bowl with a clove of garlic.
Add oil a few drops at a time, tossing gently after each addition until each leaf glistens.
Shake a few drops of vinegar over the salad.
Dust with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Garnish with chopped chives, parsley, and fresh tarragon if available.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together425 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Lettuce + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together261 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together589 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 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 chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, vinegar, pepper, parsley, tarragon):

Shallotfits better
Mustardfits better
Beetrootfits better
Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, vinegar, pepper, parsley, tarragon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.