Name: Grape Fruit Salad
Ingredients: Grapefruit; Salad oil (1 tablespoon); Juice of 1 lemon; Paprika; Coarse sea salt (to taste); Lettuce; Maraschino cherries (optional)

Why it works: Grapefruit and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Grape Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the grapefruit and sweeten to taste.
Mix salad oil with lemon juice.
Season with paprika and coarse sea salt.
Pour the dressing over the grapefruit.

Serve

Serve on a bed of lettuce.
Top with maraschino cherries if desired.

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.

Grapefruit + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together118 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Grapefruit + lemontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together184 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit: Provides the main fresh, tart-sweet fruit base of the salad.
Salad oil: Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing, carrying the seasonings.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the grapefruit and balances its sweetness.