Name: Cheese Salad
Ingredients: 2 heaping tablespoons dry, rich cheese (such as Edam, Rochefort, or Gorgonzola); 1 medium head of lettuce; plain salad dressing

Why it works: Cheese and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 614 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cheese Salad

Ingredients

2 heaping tablespoons dry, rich cheese (such as Edam, Rochefort, or Gorgonzola)
1 medium head of lettuce
plain salad dressing

Directions

Prepare

Wash the lettuce thoroughly.
Tear the leaves apart and place them in a salad dish.

Assemble and serve

Break the cheese into small bits and scatter it among the lettuce.
Pour a plain salad dressing over the salad and serve immediately.

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.

Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together614 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry, rich cheese: Adds a sharp, salty flavour and aroma that stands out against the mild lettuce.
Lettuce: Forms the crisp, leafy base that carries the cheese and dressing.
Plain salad dressing: Adds moisture and a light coating of flavour across the leaves.

“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.