Name: Cheese and Cherries
Ingredients: large whole cherries; cheese; nut meats or pimientos (optional); lettuce leaves; mayonnaise

Why it works: Cheese and meat work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 564 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cheese and Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Wash, drain, and stone the cherries.
Fill the centers of the cherries with cheese.
Serve the filled cherries on lettuce leaves with mayonnaise.
Optionally, prepare the cheese with nut meats or pimientos before filling the cherries.

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 + meattop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together564 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together614 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).