Name: Lettuce Salad
Ingredients: 1 pound crisp lettuce; 1 egg white, finely chopped; 2 or 3 small radishes, thinly sliced

Why it works: Lettuce and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

1 pound crisp lettuce
1 egg white, finely chopped
2 or 3 small radishes, thinly sliced

Directions

Cut the lettuce into ½ inch squares or slice it finely.
Just before serving, add the lettuce to the dressing.
Garnish the dish with the chopped egg white and thinly sliced radishes.

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 + radishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together58 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Egg + radishtop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).