Name: Corn Salad
Ingredients: corn; sugar; vinegar; lemon juice; hard-boiled eggs; mustard; sweet oil; coarse sea salt; black pepper

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Corn Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Dress the corn with sugar and vinegar or lemon juice.
Alternatively, mix hard-boiled eggs, vinegar, mustard, sweet oil, coarse sea salt, and black pepper for a dressing.
Serve with scurvy grass and lettuce if desired.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,816 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn: Forms the bulk of the salad, providing sweetness and a crisp, tender bite.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and body to the dressing, softening its sharpness.
Mustard: Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the oil into the dressing.
Sweet oil: Provides fat and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the dressing.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, sugar, vinegar, lemon, egg, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Asparagusfits about as well
Mustardthe original
Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, vinegar, lemon, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.