Name: Onion and Pepper Salad
Ingredients: 6 green peppers, seeds removed; 1 large Bermuda onion; coarse sea salt to taste; black pepper to taste; 2 teaspoons French mustard; ½ cup olive oil; juice of 1 lemon; 1 inch preserved ginger, finely chopped; lettuce leaves for serving

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Onion and Pepper Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the green peppers and Bermuda onion very finely.
In a bowl, combine the chopped peppers and onion with salt, pepper, French mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, and preserved ginger.
Mix well and serve on a bed of ice-cold lettuce leaves.

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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers: Provide the main bulk and crisp, fresh texture of the salad.
Bermuda onion: Adds sharp, pungent flavor and crunch that balances the sweetness of the peppers.
Olive oil: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and coating the vegetables.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavors and sharpens the dressing.
French mustard: Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the oil and lemon juice into a cohesive dressing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, olive, lemon, ginger, lettuce):

Broccolifits better
Spinachfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, olive, lemon, ginger, lettuce. 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.