Name: Apples— Cress Salad
Ingredients: watercress; tart apple; pecan nuts; Hygia dressing

Why it works: Watercress and nuts share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Apples— Cress Salad

Ingredients

watercress
tart apple
pecan nuts
Hygia dressing

Directions

Wash the watercress thoroughly and place it in a salad bowl.
Cover the watercress with thinly sliced tart apple.
Sprinkle pecan nuts over the apple.
Drizzle with Hygia 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.

Watercress + nutstop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Watercress + appletop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Apple + nutstop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together237 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).