Name: Sardine Salad
Ingredients: 1 tin sardines; 2 hard-boiled eggs; 1 head of lettuce; salad dressing

Why it works: Egg and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,301 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Sardine Salad

Ingredients

1 tin sardines
2 hard-boiled eggs
1 head of lettuce
salad dressing

Directions

Prepare

Split the sardines open and remove the bones.
Break some of the lettuce into a bowl and lay the sardines on top.
Chop one of the eggs and sprinkle it over the sardines.

Dress and serve

Pour on the salad dressing.
Cover with the remaining lettuce.
Garnish with the other egg sliced and a little watercress or beetroot.

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.

Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines: Provide the main protein and rich, savoury flavour of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add soft, creamy texture and body to the salad.
Lettuce: Forms the bed and cover, adding crisp texture and moisture.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture, fat and acidity that bind the salad together.

“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.