Name: Nasturtium Salad
Ingredients: 2 hard-boiled eggs; shredded lettuce; nasturtium flowers; French dressing

Why it works: Egg and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,301 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Nasturtium Salad

Ingredients

2 hard-boiled eggs
shredded lettuce
nasturtium flowers
French dressing

Directions

Slice the hard-boiled eggs over a dish of shredded lettuce.
Dot the salad with nasturtium flowers.
Serve with French 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.

Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Add protein-rich body and a creamy, mild richness to the salad.
Shredded lettuce: Forms the crisp, fresh base that holds the other components.
Nasturtium flowers: Contribute a peppery aroma and a bright splash of colour to the salad.
French dressing: Adds moisture, sweetness and acidity that season the whole 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.