Name: Neufchatel-Cheese Salad
Ingredients: 1 Neufchatel cheese; 3 tablespoons tart jelly; 2 cups shredded lettuce; Salt to taste; French dressing; Paprika

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 ↓

Neufchatel-Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Line a bowl with shredded lettuce.
Press the Neufchatel cheese through a wire strainer over the lettuce, or mix it with seasoning and a little milk into small balls.
Garnish with small pieces of jelly and sprinkle with paprika.
Serve with French dressing in a separate dish.

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

Neufchatel cheese: Provides the creamy, mild base of the salad that holds its shape when pressed or shaped.
Tart jelly: Adds bright acidity and sweetness that contrasts with the rich, mild cheese.
Shredded lettuce: Forms the crisp, fresh bed that the cheese rests on and adds texture.

“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.