Name: Sour Cream Salad Dressing
Ingredients: 1 cup whipped sour cream; 1 teaspoon salt; a pinch of cayenne pepper; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 3 tablespoons vinegar

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Sour Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

In a bowl, combine the whipped sour cream, salt, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and vinegar.
Mix all ingredients together thoroughly.

Serve

Serve over vegetables.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,334 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together21,449 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream + vinegartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,064 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Whipped sour cream: Provides the creamy body and fat that give the dressing its smooth texture and tangy base.
Lemon juice: Adds bright acidity that balances the richness of the sour cream.
Vinegar: Adds sharp acidity that gives the dressing its clean, tangy bite.