Name: Cheese Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup cooked chicken, diced; cheese (type not specified); French dressing or cooked dressing; lettuce; whites of 2 eggs, shredded; 2-3 olives, stuffed with peppers

Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

Rub the yolks of the eggs through a ricer.
Mix the yolks with the diced chicken and cheese.

Serve

Serve the mixture with French or cooked dressing.
Garnish with lettuce and arrange the shredded egg whites around the salad.
Place 2-3 stuffed olives in each nest of egg whites.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,888 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,263 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Cheese + olivetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,802 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Yolks are pressed into a fine mass that binds the salad, while the whites form the garnish.
Cheese: Adds savoury flavour and richness to the chicken and yolk mixture.
Cooked chicken: Provides the main protein and substance of the salad.
French dressing or cooked dressing: Adds moisture and acidity that brighten the rich chicken and yolk mixture.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cheese, egg, olive, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Tomatofits better
Asparagusfits better
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cheese, egg, olive, 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.