Name: Prune Salad
Ingredients: prunes; nuts; cream cheese; lettuce; mayonnaise; cooked dressing; French dressing

Why it works: Nuts and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 174 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Prune Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Soak prunes in water until soft.
Cook prunes until tender.
Remove stones from prunes.
Fill each prune with nuts or cream cheese.
Serve filled prunes on a bed of lettuce.
Drizzle with mayonnaise or your choice of 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.

Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together174 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Nuts + cream cheesetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together56 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Cream cheese + lettucetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together213 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).