Name: Lettuce Salad
Ingredients: young lettuce leaves; chopped olives; chopped English walnuts; small bits of Neufchatel cheese; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Take young lettuce leaves and fill them with chopped olives, chopped English walnuts, and small bits of Neufchatel cheese.
Mix the filled lettuce with mayonnaise dressing.

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.

Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,087 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Olive + cheesetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,802 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).
Walnut + cheesetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together410 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Young lettuce leaves: Provide a crisp, edible base that holds the filling.
Chopped olives: Add salty, briny flavor that contrasts with the rich dressing.
Chopped english walnuts: Add crunch and a nutty, slightly bitter note.
Small bits of neufchatel cheese: Add creamy texture and mild tang to the filling.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and creaminess that binds the filling and coats the leaves.