Name: Cottage Cheese Salad
Ingredients: ½ teaspoon salt; ⅛ teaspoon pepper; Cottage cheese; Lettuce; French dressing

Why it works: Pepper and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cottage Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Mix cottage cheese with salt and pepper thoroughly.
Form the mixture into balls the size of an English walnut.
Serve the cheese balls on a bed of lettuce with French 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.

Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cottage cheese + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pepper + cottage cheesetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together393 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).