Name: Summer Salad
Ingredients: 3 heads of lettuce; 2 handfuls of cress; 1 cucumber, peeled and sliced; 4 radishes, peeled and chopped; 3 hard-boiled eggs, cut lengthwise into sixths

Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber 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 ↓

Summer Salad

Ingredients

3 heads of lettuce
2 handfuls of cress
1 cucumber, peeled and sliced
4 radishes, peeled and chopped
3 hard-boiled eggs, cut lengthwise into sixths

Directions

Prepare

Chop the lettuce and cress with a sharp knife.
Mix the chopped lettuce, cress, cucumber, and radishes in a bowl.

Dress and serve

Pour over a dressing of your choice.
Arrange the sliced eggs on top.

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 + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together58 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cucumber + eggtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,346 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).