Name: Summer Salad
Ingredients: 1 large head of lettuce; 1 head of endive; 1 bunch of mustard and cress; 1 bunch of watercress; 2 spring onions; 2 tomatoes; 2 hard-boiled eggs; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Endive and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 45 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Summer Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Shred the lettuce, endive, spring onions, tomatoes, and cress.
Place the shredded ingredients in a salad bowl.

Dress and serve

Add mayonnaise dressing and mix well.
Decorate with slices of hard-boiled egg, tomato, and tufts of cress.

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.

Endive + watercresstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together45 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together284 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + watercresstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together293 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce: Forms the crisp, leafy base of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and creaminess that coats the shredded leaves.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add protein-rich body and a firm, mild contrast to the greens.
Tomatoes: Contribute juiciness and a mild acidity to the salad.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, endive, mustard, watercress, onion, egg):

Chivefits better
Horseradishfits better
Beetrootfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, endive, mustard, watercress, onion, egg. 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.