Name: Endive Salad
Ingredients: 1 head endive; 4 hard-cooked eggs; 1 pint boiled potatoes, sliced; French salad dressing

Why it works: Endive and potato work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Endive Salad

Ingredients

1 head endive
4 hard-cooked eggs
1 pint boiled potatoes, sliced
French salad dressing

Directions

Prepare the endive

Wash and dry the endive, discarding the green outer leaves and using only the light-colored feathery leaves.

Assemble and dress

Arrange the endive on a salad dish with the white leaves in the center.
Cut the hard-cooked eggs into quarters lengthwise and place them around the endive.
Mix the sliced boiled potatoes with the eggs and pour French dressing over the entire salad.

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.

Endive + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Egg + potatotop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,978 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Endive + eggtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together207 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Endive: Forms the crisp, slightly bitter leafy base of the salad.
Hard-cooked eggs: Add richness and substance, with firm whites and creamy yolks.
Boiled potatoes: Add starchy bulk and a soft, tender texture to the salad.
French salad dressing: Adds moisture, acidity and flavor that coats the other ingredients.