Name: Onion Salad
Ingredients: 6 small onions; 3 raw onions; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; vinegar to taste

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Onion Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the small onions until tender.
Halve the boiled onions and separate the layers into a bowl.
Slice the raw onions and add them to the bowl.

Dress and serve

Sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Pour vinegar over the salad and mix gently.

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.

Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,226 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Small onions: Provide the main body of the salad, becoming soft and sweet after boiling.
Raw onions: Add a sharp, pungent bite and crisp texture contrasting with the boiled onions.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the onions' sweetness.