Name: Green Pepper Salad
Ingredients: sweet green peppers; cream cheese; lettuce leaves; mayonnaise dressing; candied cherries

Why it works: Pepper and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Pepper Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the tops off the sweet green peppers and remove the seeds.
Fill each pepper with cream cheese, packing it tightly.
Slice the filled peppers thinly and arrange them on lettuce leaves.
Pour mayonnaise dressing over the peppers.
Top each pepper slice with a candied cherry.

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.

Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cream cheese + lettucetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together213 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pepper + cream cheesetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,195 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).