Name: Cherry Salad
Ingredients: California cherries, red and white; blanched hazel nuts; heart leaves of head lettuce; French dressing; cherry juice

Why it works: Lettuce and cherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Cherry Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove the pits from the California cherries.
Fill the cavities of the cherries with blanched hazel nuts.
Arrange the cherries on heart leaves of head lettuce.

Serve

Serve with French dressing mixed with some cherry juice.

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 + cherrytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together242 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together174 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Nuts + cherrytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together57 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

California cherries: Provide the sweet, juicy fruit that forms the main body of the salad.
Hazel nuts: Add a crunchy texture and nutty flavor inside each cherry.
Heart leaves of head lettuce: Offer a crisp, cool base that holds the cherries.
French dressing: Adds acidity and fat that balance the cherries' sweetness.