Name: Pepper and Cream Cheese Salad
Ingredients: medium-sized green or red peppers; cream cheese or cottage cheese; crisp lettuce; French dressing or mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Pepper and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pepper and Cream Cheese Salad

Ingredients

medium-sized green or red peppers
cream cheese or cottage cheese
crisp lettuce
French dressing or mayonnaise dressing

Directions

Cut off the small end of the peppers and remove the insides.
Wipe out the peppers and fill them with cream cheese or cottage cheese.
Press down firmly to pack the cheese into all the flutings inside.
Set the filled peppers on ice.
Serve whole or cut into thick slices on a bed of crisp lettuce with dressing.

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.

Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cream cheese + lettucetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together213 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pepper + cream cheesetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,195 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).