Name: Ribbon Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup cold cooked string beans; 1 cup peas; 1 cup celery, cut into small pieces; plain French dressing; cold mayonnaise; shredded lettuce; radish roses for garnish

Why it works: Beans and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Ribbon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Dress the string beans and peas with plain French dressing.
Dress the celery with cold mayonnaise.
Arrange a bed of shredded lettuce on a serving plate.

Assemble and serve

Layer the beans, celery, and peas alternately on the lettuce, with celery as the center layer.
Garnish with radish roses and serve very cold.

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.

Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together500 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together58 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Beans + peastop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together949 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

String beans: Provide the main body of the salad and absorb the French dressing's flavor.
Peas: Add sweetness and a soft texture that contrasts with the crisp celery.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and a fresh bite at the centre of the layers.
Cold mayonnaise: Adds fat and creamy moisture that coats the celery.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, celery, lettuce, radish, rose):

Chickpeafits better
Almondfits better
Lentilsfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, lettuce, radish, rose. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.