Name: Peach Salad
Ingredients: ripe peaches; finely shredded lettuce; 1 part boiled dressing; 2 parts whipped cream; maraschino cherries

Why it works: Peach and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Peach Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the peaches, cut them in halves, and peel them.

Assemble and serve

Serve two peach halves on a bed of finely shredded lettuce.
Fill the cavities of the peaches with a dressing made by mixing boiled dressing and whipped cream.
Garnish with maraschino cherries.

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.

Peach + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Peach + creamtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together721 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Lettuce + creamtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe peaches: Provide the sweet, juicy fruit base that the dressing sits in.
Boiled dressing: Adds tang and a thick, creamy body to the filling.
Whipped cream: Trapped air makes the filling light and adds richness.