Name: Ham Salad
Ingredients: 2 heads lettuce; 1 tablespoon butter; 3 egg yolks; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; ½ pint sour cream; ¼ tablespoon sugar; ½ pint vinegar; 1 teaspoon pepper

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ham Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the sour cream, vinegar, pepper, salt, sugar, and mustard in a bowl.
Cook the mixture over hot water until thickened, then stir in the beaten egg yolks.
Chill the dressing in the refrigerator.
Cut the ham into small bits and shred the lettuce.
Combine the ham and lettuce in a salad bowl.
Pour the dressing over the mixture, stir well, and serve.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,370 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, cream, sugar, vinegar, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Asparagusfits better
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, cream, sugar, vinegar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.