Name: Russian Salads
Ingredients: cold chopped meats (chicken, ham, tongue); mushrooms; anchovies; lettuce; French dressing or sauce Tartare

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Russian Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Finely chop the cold meats of your choice.
Mix the chopped meats with mushrooms and anchovies.
Serve the mixture on a bed of lettuce.
Drizzle with French dressing or sauce Tartare.

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.

Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,172 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).
Mushroom + lettucetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together292 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,449 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, ham, mushroom, sauce):

Tomatofits better
Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, ham, mushroom, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.