Name: White Wax Cherry Salad
Ingredients: 1 can white wax cherries, pitted; ½ cup filberts or preferred nuts; 1 small can chunk pineapple, drained; Juice of 1 lemon; 1 tablespoon olive oil; A pinch of red pepper; Lettuce leaves for serving; Red cherries for garnish; Firm mayonnaise for serving

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

White Wax Cherry Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Pit the white wax cherries and replace the seeds with filberts or your preferred nuts.
Drain the chunk pineapple thoroughly and let it stand for five minutes in the lemon juice.
Add the olive oil and red pepper to the pineapple mixture and combine well.

Serve

Serve the mixture on a bed of lettuce, garnishing with a few red cherries and a dollop of firm mayonnaise.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,922 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

White wax cherries: Provide the main fruit body and sweet, mild flavor of the salad.
Filberts or preferred nuts: Add crunch and a toasty, rich flavor against the soft fruit.
Chunk pineapple: Adds juicy sweetness and a bright, tangy note to the salad.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavors and slightly firms the pineapple.
Firm mayonnaise: Adds creamy richness and fat that balances the fruit's acidity.

Swap the filbert

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

Chickpeafits better
Chestnutfits better
Beansfits better
Filbertthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, lemon, olive, pepper, 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.