Name: Japanese Salad
Ingredients: 1 pint cooked rice; walnuts; almonds; raisins; pecans; oranges; cooked prunes; mayonnaise dressing; crisp lettuce leaves

Why it works: Walnut and lettuce 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 ↓

Japanese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Moisten the cooked rice with mayonnaise dressing.
Mound the rice carefully on crisp lettuce leaves.
Arrange cooked prunes stuffed with almonds, walnuts, or pecans, cooked raisins, and quartered oranges on top.
Garnish with lettuce or other greens.

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.

Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together993 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,781 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Almond + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together210 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Walnut + pecanstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together634 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked rice: Forms the bulk of the salad and holds the dressing and toppings.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture and richness so the rice stays tender and cohesive.
Oranges: Add acidity and fresh sweetness to balance the rich dressing.
Cooked prunes: Add soft sweetness and chewy texture as a stuffed topping.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, walnut, almond, raisin, pecans, lettuce):

Coconutfits better
Figfits better
Avocadofits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, walnut, almond, raisin, pecans, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.