Name: Summer Salad
Ingredients: 2 cucumbers; 6 artichokes; 1 root of celery; 10 small red radishes; chopped chervil; French dressing

Why it works: Artichoke and chervil share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Summer Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel and slice the cucumbers very thin.
Trim and boil the artichokes.
Wash and cut the celery into small pieces.
Slice the radishes.

Assemble and serve

Mix all the ingredients in a salad bowl.
Sprinkle with chopped chervil and cover with French dressing before serving.

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.

Artichoke + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Cucumber + artichoketop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together135 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cucumber + cherviltop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together144 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Artichoke + radishtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10 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

Cucumbers: Provide the crisp, watery body that makes up most of the salad.
Artichokes: Add a tender, mild, slightly nutty bulk to the salad.
Celery: Contributes crunch and a fresh, slightly salty vegetal flavour.
Radishes: Add peppery sharpness and crisp texture.
French dressing: Adds oil and acid that coat the vegetables and bring them together in flavour.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, artichoke, radish, chervil):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Parsleyfits better
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, artichoke, radish, chervil. 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.