Name: Easter Egg Salad
Ingredients: 1 can pineapple; white pitted cherries; paprika; Tokay grapes; mayonnaise; American or cottage cheese; crisp lettuce leaves

Why it works: Pineapple and grape match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 709 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Easter Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Place a slice of pineapple on a crisp lettuce leaf.
On the pineapple, arrange a circle of mayonnaise and sprinkle with paprika.
In the hollow formed by the mayonnaise, place varicolored balls made of cherries, grapes, shaped cheese, and nuts.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together709 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Pineapple + cottage cheesetop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together42 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together271 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Grape + lettucetop 12% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together349 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Grape + cottage cheesetop 15% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together46 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, grape, cottage cheese):

Tomatobetter flavor fit
Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
Lettucethe original
Cucumberabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, grape, cottage cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).