Name: Baked Apple Salad
Ingredients: Northern Spy apples; nuts; lettuce; mayonnaise

Why it works: Nuts and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 174 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Baked Apple Salad

Ingredients

Northern Spy apples
nuts
lettuce
mayonnaise

Directions

Core and peel the Northern Spy apples.
Bake or boil the apples until done.
Let the apples cool.
Stuff the center of each apple with nuts.
Serve on a lettuce leaf with mayonnaise 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.

Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together174 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together515 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Apple + nutstop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together237 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).