Name: Cucumber Salad
Ingredients: 2 cucumbers; 2 anchovies, chopped; 2 gherkins, chopped; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; Mayonnaise; Lettuce leaves

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

Peel the cucumbers and cut off the stem end.
Scrape out the inside of the cucumbers.

Make the filling

Mix the pulp with the chopped anchovies and gherkins.
Add the lemon juice and mix well.
Spoon the mixture back into the cucumber shells.

Serve

Serve on lettuce leaves and pour mayonnaise over the top.

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.

Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,067 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers: Provide the crisp, watery shell and pulp that form the base of the salad.
Anchovies: Add a salty, savoury depth to the filling.
Gherkins: Add acidity and a tangy bite to the filling.
Mayonnaise: Adds richness and fat, coating the filling with a creamy texture.