Name: Fish Salad
Ingredients: cold salmon or any fish; hard boiled eggs; lettuce; salad dressing (with or without mustard)

Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

cold salmon or any fish
hard boiled eggs
lettuce
salad dressing (with or without mustard)

Directions

Cut the cold salmon or fish into slices.
Place the slices in a dish with hard boiled eggs and broken pieces of crisp lettuce.
Pour salad dressing over the mixture.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,485 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Salmon + mustardtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together839 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Salmon + lettucetop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together487 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,210 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).