Name: Roquefort Cheese Salad
Ingredients: 1 garlic clove; lettuce leaves; 2 tomatoes; 1 cucumber; ½ cup Roquefort cheese; ⅓ cup French dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roquefort Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bowl

Rub a bowl lightly with the garlic clove.
Line the bowl with lettuce leaves.
Chop the tomatoes and cucumber, then fill the bowl with them.

Dress and serve

Grate the Roquefort cheese and mix it with the French dressing.
Pour the dressing over the salad and serve.

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 + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,076 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Garlic + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,556 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic clove: Rubbed on the bowl, it leaves a light aroma on the salad.
Lettuce leaves: Form the crisp base that holds the chopped vegetables.
Tomatoes: Add moisture and fresh, slightly acidic juice to the salad.
Cucumber: Adds cool moisture and a crisp texture.
Roquefort cheese: Contributes fat and a sharp, salty, tangy flavor.
French dressing: Adds moisture, fat and acidity that coat the salad and cheese.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, roquefort cheese):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Celeryfits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, roquefort cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.