Name: Salads with Mayonnaise
Ingredients: ripe currants or barberries; young onions, sliced; cucumbers; lettuce; plain dressing; acid plums; large red sour cherries (Morella); powdered sugar; pineapple

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce 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 ↓

Salads with Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Combine ripe currants or barberries with sliced young onions, cucumbers, or lettuce.
Dress with plain dressing.
For a fruit salad, use acid plums or Morella cherries, stoned and sprinkled with powdered sugar.
For pineapple, peel and tear it from the core with a silver fork, dust with powdered sugar, and serve immediately.
Keep pineapple in a cold place and use before it softens.

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.

Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Plum + pineappletop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together147 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol (fusel, malty).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together222 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cucumber, lettuce, plum, sugar, pineapple):

Avocadofits better
Cherryfits better
Pearfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cucumber, lettuce, plum, sugar, pineapple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.