Name: Prune and Nut Salad
Ingredients: prunes; lettuce; cream dressing; chopped pecan meat

Why it works: Lettuce and meat work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Prune and Nut Salad

Ingredients

prunes
lettuce
cream dressing
chopped pecan meat

Directions

Cook prunes until tender, then remove the stones and cut the fruit into eighths lengthwise.
Arrange the prunes on a bed of lettuce with a mound of cream dressing in the center.
Sprinkle chopped pecan meat over the 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.

Lettuce + meattop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cream + meattop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,248 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lettuce + creamtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).