Name: Water Lily Salad
Ingredients: 1 large or 2 small heads of lettuce; 3 to 6 hard cooked eggs; boiled dressing; radishes

Why it works: Lettuce and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Water Lily Salad

Ingredients

1 large or 2 small heads of lettuce
3 to 6 hard cooked eggs
boiled dressing
radishes

Directions

Cook the eggs for 30 minutes. Once cold, remove the shells and cut the eggs crosswise into small pieces to resemble flower leaves.
Wash and dry the lettuce. Cut the large leaves into narrow shreds, saving the nicest small leaves whole.
Arrange the finely shredded lettuce on the bottom of a platter and pour the boiled dressing over it.
Place the whole leaves on top and put half an egg in the center of each leaf.
Garnish with radishes.

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.

Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together58 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Egg + radishtop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).