Name: Dandelion Salad
Ingredients: 1 bunch dandelion greens; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; 2 hard boiled eggs; 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Dandelion Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

Cook the dandelion greens in salted water until tender.
Chop the cooked greens finely and mix with butter, pepper, and salt.

Finish and serve

Slice the hard boiled eggs and arrange them over the salad.
Drizzle with lemon juice or vinegar before serving.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Dandelion + lemontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together57 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Dandelion + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together77 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Dandelion greens: Form the main body of the salad and wilt to a tender, mildly bitter base.
Butter: Adds fat and a rich, smooth mouthfeel that coats the chopped greens.
Hard boiled eggs: Add protein-rich bulk and a soft, creamy contrast to the tender greens.
Lemon juice or vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.

“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.