Name: Nut and Cheese Salad
Ingredients: whole blanched almonds; cheese; finely ground almonds; lettuce leaves; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Almond and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Nut and Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cover whole blanched almonds with cheese and shape them into egg shapes.
Roll the shaped almonds in finely ground almonds.
Pile the coated almonds in nests of lettuce leaves.
Serve with mayonnaise 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.

Almond + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together210 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together614 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Almond + cheesetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together284 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).