Name: Cheese Salad
Ingredients: 8 ounces cream cheese; 1 tablespoon heavy cream; 1 teaspoon paprika; Lettuce leaves; French dressing; Finely chopped parsley

Why it works: Lettuce and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese balls

Mash the cream cheese with a fork.
If it is stiff, mix in a little heavy cream.
Season the mixture with paprika and form it into small balls.

Assemble and serve

Arrange the lettuce leaves in nests by placing two leaves with stem ends together.
Place three cheese balls in each lettuce nest.
Pour French dressing over the nests.
Sprinkle half of the nests with finely chopped parsley and the other half with paprika for color.

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 + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cream cheese + creamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,087 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Cream cheese + lettucetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together213 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Cream + lettucetop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Cream cheese + parsleytop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together292 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese: Forms the body of the salad and gives it a soft, rich texture once mashed.
Heavy cream: Adds moisture and softness to cream cheese that has become stiff.