Name: Winter Salad
Ingredients: endive; mustard greens; cress; celery; hard-boiled eggs; boiled beet; salad dressing

Why it works: Endive and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 121 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Winter Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Take the desired quantity of endive, mustard greens, cress, and celery.
Clean thoroughly and dry with a cloth.
Place in a salad bowl.
Garnish with rings of hard-boiled eggs and boiled beet.
Pour salad dressing into the dish, but not over the salad.

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.

Endive + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together121 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Endive + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together160 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,210 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Endive + eggtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together207 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).