Name: Bean Salad
Ingredients: 6 leaves of crisp lettuce; 1 cup baked beans; 1 cup cooked tongue or ox palate, diced; 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon white pepper; 2 tablespoons vinegar; salad dressing for topping

Why it works: Lettuce and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Place the lettuce leaves in a salad bowl.
Add the baked beans, diced tongue or ox palate, and chopped hard-boiled eggs.
Season with chopped parsley, salt, white pepper, and vinegar, then mix the ingredients together and arrange neatly in the bowl.
Top with a layer of salad 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.

Lettuce + beanstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together500 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,451 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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

What each ingredient does

Baked beans: Provide the main bulk and soft, starchy texture of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add body and a soft, rich texture through the salad.
Tongue or ox palate: Adds savory, meaty flavor and chew to the salad.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavors of the beans and meat.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, beans, egg, parsley, vinegar):

Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Dillfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, beans, egg, parsley, vinegar. 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.