Name: California Cherry Salad
Ingredients: large red California cherries; French dressing; lettuce leaves; chopped pecan nuts

Why it works: Lettuce and nuts 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 ↓

California Cherry Salad

Ingredients

large red California cherries
French dressing
lettuce leaves
chopped pecan nuts

Directions

Prepare the cherries

Wash the cherries and discard any bruised or imperfect ones.
Chill the cherries until ice cold.

Assemble and serve

Mix the chilled cherries with French dressing.
Place the mixture on lettuce leaves.
Just before serving, sprinkle chopped pecan nuts on top.

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 + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together174 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Large red california cherries: Provide the main fruit, sweetness and juicy texture of the salad.
French dressing: Adds moisture and acidity that season the cherries and lightly coat the salad.
Chopped pecan nuts: Add a crunchy texture and a toasty, nutty flavour to the salad.

“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.