Name: Cheese Salad and Preseeves
Ingredients: cheese; lettuce leaves; French dressing or mayonnaise dressing; currants or other fruits; honey or sugar

Why it works: Cheese and honey work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 259 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Cheese Salad and Preseeves

Ingredients

Directions

Place pieces of cheese on lettuce leaves.
Cover with French dressing or mayonnaise.
Serve with currants or other fruits preserved in honey or sugar.

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.

Cheese + honeytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together259 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together614 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Currant + honeytop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together57 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Lettuce + honeytop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together228 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Cheese + curranttop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together67 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).