Name: Salad
Ingredients: Tender lettuces; Mustard and cress; Young radishes; Chives or small green onions (optional); Half-grown cucumbers (optional); Young celery; Cucumber vinegar (optional)

Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Gather fresh herbs and vegetables, ensuring they are clean and free from insects.
Strip away the outer leaves of the lettuces and slice them finely or break them into small pieces.
Mix in mustard and cress, young radishes, and optional chives or small green onions.
If desired, add thinly sliced cucumbers and young celery.
Dress the salad with a rich salad mixture just before serving.
Serve immediately for the best flavor.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Radish + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lettuce + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together261 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + radishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together297 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the chive

The recipe marks chive as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, mustard, radish, cucumber, celery, vinegar):

Horseradishfits better
Beetrootfits better
Broccolifits better
Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, mustard, radish, cucumber, celery, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.