Why it works: Lettuce and hazelnut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Cherry Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Arrange lettuce leaves on a flat dish.
Pit the cherries and place a hazelnut in the center of each to keep their shape.
Insert the cherries through the leaves.
Dress and serve
Mix cherry juice into the mayonnaise dressing instead of vinegar and pour it over the salad.
Garnish with a few cherries on top.
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.
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Lettuce + hazelnuttop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together21 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Lettuce + cherrytop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together242 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Hazelnut + cherrytop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together58 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the fruity sweetness and tartness that define the salad's flavor.
- Hazelnuts
- Add a crunchy, nutty texture and support the cherries' shape.
- Mayonnaise dressing
- Adds fat and creaminess that coat the leaves and bind the flavors together.
- Cherry juice
- Replaces vinegar, adding fruity acidity and flavor to the dressing.
- Lettuce leaves
- Form the crisp, cool base that carries the cherries and dressing.
The step that matters
Pit the cherries and place a hazelnut in the center of each. Removing the pit without tearing the fruit keeps the cherry intact, and the hazelnut fills the cavity so the fruit holds its round shape when threaded through the leaves.
Swap the cherry
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, hazelnut):
- Avocadofits better
- Cherrythe original
- Blueberryfits about as well
- Limefits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, hazelnut. 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.
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