Name: Vegetable Salads
Ingredients: small beets; butter; lettuce leaves; cold canned asparagus; French dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 313 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetable Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Slice small beets or chop large beets.
While warm, mix chopped beets with butter and pack into a small mold.
Let it cool, then unmold onto a lettuce leaf.
Serve cold canned asparagus with French 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.

Lettuce + asparagustop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together313 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + asparagustop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,026 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + lettucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,287 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).