Name: Meat Salad
Ingredients: 2 lbs cold beef; 1 teaspoon celery seed; 1 slice ham; ½ teaspoon minced onion; 4 hard boiled eggs; 1 head lettuce; 2 minced cold potatoes; 1 cup mayonnaise

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Meat Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Dice the cold beef and ham.
Chop the hard boiled eggs and lettuce.

Assemble and serve

In a large bowl, combine the beef, ham, celery seed, minced onion, eggs, lettuce, and potatoes.
Add the mayonnaise and mix well.
Serve chilled.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,047 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + potatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef: Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.
Hard boiled eggs: Add richness and substance to the salad.
Mayonnaise: Binds the ingredients together and adds moisture and fat.
Potatoes: Add starchy body that helps the salad hold together.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, ham, onion, egg, potato):

Chivefits better
Carrotfits better
Leekfits better
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, ham, onion, egg, potato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.