Name: Hot Dandelion Salad
Ingredients: fresh dandelion leaves; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 2 slices of bacon; 2 tablespoons vinegar

Why it works: Dandelion and pepper work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77 recipes. Both carry 2-heptenal, which smells green. The science ↓

Hot Dandelion Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

Wash the dandelion leaves in several waters and drain them.
Arrange the leaves in a salad bowl and season with salt and pepper.

Add the bacon and vinegar

Break the bacon into small pieces and fry until cooked.
Add the bacon fat to the salad.
Heat the vinegar in the pan and pour it over the salad before serving.

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.

Dandelion + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together77 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Dandelion + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together57 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).