Name: Green Onion Salad
Ingredients: 1 head of lettuce; 1 bunch of green onions; French dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,562 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Onion Salad

Ingredients

1 head of lettuce
1 bunch of green onions
French dressing

Directions

Shred the lettuce finely and place it in a salad bowl.
Cut the green onions into half-inch lengths and place them in the center of the lettuce.
Pour French dressing over the salad and serve.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce: Forms the crisp, leafy base that holds the other components.
Green onions: Adds sharp, aromatic flavour and a bit of crunch.
French dressing: Adds moisture, sweetness and acidity that coat the leaves and onions.

“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.