Name: Cardinal Salad
Ingredients: 2 heads of lettuce; 1 bunch of watercress; 2 boiled red beets, thinly sliced; 6 small red radishes, sliced; 6 hard-boiled eggs, chopped; 1 cucumber, sliced; ½ pint cardinal mayonnaise (made by adding beet juice to plain mayonnaise)

Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cardinal Salad

Ingredients

2 heads of lettuce
1 bunch of watercress
2 boiled red beets, thinly sliced
6 small red radishes, sliced
6 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
1 cucumber, sliced
½ pint cardinal mayonnaise (made by adding beet juice to plain mayonnaise)

Directions

Prepare

Wash and dry the lettuce and watercress.
Cut the boiled beets and radishes into thin slices.
Chop the hard-boiled eggs finely.

Assemble and serve

Arrange the lettuce leaves in a salad bowl.
Mix the watercress, radishes, beets, eggs, and cucumber together.
Add the cardinal mayonnaise to the mixture and combine well.
Place the mixture on top of the lettuce leaves and serve immediately.

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 + watercresstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Watercress + radishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together58 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Add body and a soft, rich texture to the salad filling.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and creaminess that binds the salad together and carries the beet colour.
Beets: Provide sweetness and earthy flavour, and the juice colours the mayonnaise.
Lettuce: Forms a crisp, moisture-holding base for the salad.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, watercress, egg, cucumber):

Beetrootfits better
Chivefits better
Horseradishfits better
Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, watercress, egg, cucumber. 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.