Name: Watercress Salad
Ingredients: 1 pint fresh watercress; 3 tablespoons oil; 1 tablespoon vinegar; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper

Why it works: Watercress and pepper work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Watercress Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the watercress thoroughly and remove any decayed leaves.
Break the watercress into lengths of about 2 inches.
Shake the watercress dry in a clean towel.

Serve

Arrange the watercress neatly on a cold dish.
Dress the watercress with oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

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.

Watercress + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Watercress + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together465 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Watercress: Forms the leafy base and gives the salad its fresh, peppery flavor.
Oil: Adds fat that carries flavor and coats the leaves for a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the oil.

“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.