Name: Cheese and Olive Salad
Ingredients: 1 package cream cheese; 2 tablespoons cream; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; 2 tablespoons finely chopped olives; ½ small can pimentoes, cut in thin strips; Crisp lettuce leaves; Mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cheese and Olive Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese mixture

Moisten the cream cheese with cream.
Mash the cheese very finely and season with salt and cayenne pepper.
Add chopped olives and pimento strips.
Form the mixture into the original shape of the cheese and let it stand for two hours.

Serve

Cut into slices, arrange on crisp lettuce leaves, and cover with mayonnaise dressing.

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.

Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,263 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,003 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).
Cream cheese + creamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,087 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese: Forms the creamy base of the salad, and moistening it with cream makes it easier to mash smooth.
Cream: Adds moisture and softness so the cream cheese mashes into a smooth, spreadable mixture.
Olives: Add salty, briny flavor and a bit of texture to the mild cheese.
Pimentoes: Add mild sweetness, color and soft texture to the mixture.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream cheese, cream, pepper, olive):

Capsicumfits better
Spinachfits better
Tomatofits better
Lettucethe original

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

“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.