Name: Stuffed Cucumber Salad
Ingredients: medium-sized cucumbers; iced water; lettuce leaves; small tomatoes; stalks of celery; sprigs of parsley; onion (size of a hazel-nut); mayonnaise

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stuffed Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the cucumbers and cut them in half lengthwise.
Scrape out the seeds and soak the cucumber halves in iced water for 1-2 hours.
Remove the cucumbers from the water, dry them, and arrange on lettuce leaves.
For each cucumber, prepare a small tomato, a stalk of celery, a sprig of parsley, and a bit of onion.
Peel the tomato, remove the seeds, and chop the pulp finely with the celery, onion, and parsley.
Mix the chopped ingredients with a little mayonnaise.
Fill the cucumber halves with the mixture and top with more mayonnaise.
Serve each guest with half of a cucumber boat and a leaf of lettuce.

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.

Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, lettuce, tomato, celery, parsley):

Carrotfits better
Beetrootfits better
Eggplantfits better
Onionthe original

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