Name: Salad of Artichoke Bottoms, Lettuce, and Peas, with Mayonnaise
Ingredients: canned artichoke bottoms; mayonnaise; green peas; string beans; cauliflower flowerets; lettuce leaves

Why it works: Artichoke and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 101 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Salad of Artichoke Bottoms, Lettuce, and Peas, with Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Rinse the canned artichoke bottoms with cold water.
Spread mayonnaise on each artichoke bottom.
Top with green peas, string beans, cauliflower, or any preferred vegetables.
Add a little mayonnaise on top of the vegetables.
Arrange the artichoke cups on a bed of lettuce leaves with mayonnaise or place a cup of mayonnaise in the center and arrange the portions around it.

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.

Artichoke + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together101 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Artichoke + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together70 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together500 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Artichoke + beanstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together154 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cauliflower + lettucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together151 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, beans, cauliflower, lettuce):

Lentilsfits better
Chestnutfits better
Chickpeafits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, beans, cauliflower, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.