Name: Grape and Cheese Salad
Ingredients: nice white Malaga grapes; lettuce; French dressing; cream cheese

Why it works: Grape and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 349 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Grape and Cheese Salad

Ingredients

nice white Malaga grapes
lettuce
French dressing
cream cheese

Directions

Cut one side of the grapes open with a small knife and remove the seeds.
Serve the grapes on a bed of lettuce with French dressing.
Cover the salad with cream cheese that has been put through a ricer.

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.

Grape + lettucetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together349 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Grape + cream cheesetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together176 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Lettuce + cream cheesetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together213 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).