Name: Cauliflower Salad
Ingredients: 2 heads of cauliflower; coarse sea salt; black pepper; light mayonnaise or cream dressing; beets (for garnish); watercress (for garnish)

Why it works: Cauliflower and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cauliflower Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the cauliflower in lightly salted water until tender.
Once cooled, cut off the flowering buds and divide them into small tufts.

Dress and serve

Place the tufts in a salad bowl and season with salt and pepper.
Pour the mayonnaise or cream dressing over the cauliflower and mix gently.
Garnish with beets and watercress.

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.

Cauliflower + watercresstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,113 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together21,449 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream + watercresstop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together211 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower: Forms the main bulk of the salad and, once boiled until tender, gives it a soft texture.
Light mayonnaise or cream dressing: Adds moisture and richness, coating the cauliflower tufts so the salad stays creamy.