Name: Imperial Salad
Ingredients: ½ head cabbage; 2 cucumbers; 2 small onions; 2 heads crisp lettuce; 3 small gherkins; salt to taste; pepper to taste; cayenne to taste; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce 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 ↓

Imperial Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the cabbage, cucumbers, onions, lettuce, and gherkins together.
Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste.
Cover the mixture with mayonnaise 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.

Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together722 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,001 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

Cabbage: Provides the crisp, bulky body that gives the salad its main texture.
Cucumbers: Add moisture and a cool, fresh crunch to the chopped mix.
Lettuce: Adds crisp leaves and volume, keeping the salad light and airy.
Onions: Contribute sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the dressing.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and creaminess, coating the vegetables and carrying the seasoning.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cucumber, lettuce, pepper):

Beetrootfits better
Cauliflowerfits better
Mustardfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cucumber, lettuce, pepper. 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.