Name: Bohemian Salad
Ingredients: crisp lettuce leaves; boiled beets, sliced; hard boiled eggs, sliced; 1 tablespoon chopped onion; Italian dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,562 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bohemian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cover the bottom of a salad dish with crisp lettuce leaves.
Layer slices of boiled beets and hard boiled eggs alternately on top.
Sprinkle with chopped onion.
Drizzle with Italian 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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Egg + oniontop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together23,333 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Egg and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Crisp lettuce leaves: Form the base layer that holds the beets, eggs and dressing.
Boiled beets: Add sweetness, earthy flavour and colour to the salad.
Hard boiled eggs: Add richness and soft texture against the crisp lettuce.
Chopped onion: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the sweet beets.
Italian dressing: Adds moisture and acidity that season the whole salad.