Name: Olive Salad
Ingredients: ripe olives; thinly sliced tomatoes; French dressing or mayonnaise dressing; lettuce

Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Olive Salad

Ingredients

ripe olives
thinly sliced tomatoes
French dressing or mayonnaise dressing
lettuce

Directions

Prepare

Stone and slice the ripe olives.

Assemble and serve

Mix the olives with equal parts of thinly sliced tomatoes and dressing.
Serve the mixture on a bed of lettuce.

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.

Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,539 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe olives: Provide the main flavour and salty, briny character of the salad.
Thinly sliced tomatoes: Add moisture and a juicy, slightly acidic bulk to the mixture.
French dressing or mayonnaise dressing: Coats the olives and tomatoes, adding fat, acidity or creaminess and moisture.
Lettuce: Forms a crisp bed that holds and presents the salad.