Name: Plain Salad, with Anchovies
Ingredients: 4 cups mixed salad greens (Coss and cabbage lettuce preferred); 12 anchovies; 2 hard-boiled eggs; 2 oz piccalilli, pickle, or plain gherkin; 1 teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 4 tablespoons olive oil; 2 tablespoons vinegar

Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Plain Salad, with Anchovies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash and dry the salad greens.
Wash and scrape the anchovies, then bone them by splitting them open.
Chop the hard-boiled eggs and add them to the salad.
Chop the piccalilli, pickle, or gherkin and mix with the salad.

Dress and serve

Season with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar; stir gently and serve.

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.

Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Salad greens: Form the base of the salad and provide crisp texture.
Anchovies: Add a salty, savoury flavour that stands out against the greens.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and body to the salad.
Olive oil: Adds fat that carries flavour and coats the leaves.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, egg, pepper, olive, vinegar):

Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Cucumberfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, pepper, olive, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.