Name: Dandelion Salad
Ingredients: dandelion greens; green onions; French dressing

Why it works: Dandelion and onion share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 52 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dandelion Salad

Ingredients

dandelion greens
green onions
French dressing

Directions

Prepare

Wash the dandelion greens thoroughly.
Finely cut the green onions.

Assemble and serve

Mix the dandelion greens and green onions together.
Drizzle with French dressing and toss to combine.

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.

Dandelion + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together52 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

Dandelion greens: Forms the leafy base of the salad and provides its bitter, fresh flavor.
Green onions: Add a sharp, mild onion flavor and a crisp texture to the greens.
French dressing: Adds sweetness, acidity and moisture that coat the leaves and bring the flavors together.

“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.