Name: Endive Salad, French Style
Ingredients: Endives; 1 clove garlic; 2 pieces bread crust (about the size of a dollar); Salt; Pepper; Vinegar; Olive oil

Why it works: Garlic and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,665 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Endive Salad, French Style

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and trim the endives carefully, then separate the leaves.
Drain the leaves and place them in a salad bowl.
Rub the garlic on the bread crust pieces and add them to the salad.
Season the salad with salt, pepper, vinegar, and olive oil.
Mix everything gently together just before serving.

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.

Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,665 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Endive + olivetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Endive + clovetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together59 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Endive + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together83 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the endive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, garlic, bread, pepper, vinegar, olive):

Capsicumfits better
Tomatofits better
Eggplantfits better
Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, bread, pepper, vinegar, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.