Name: Spring Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup cold cooked green peas; 1 cup cold boiled potatoes; ½ cup mayonnaise dressing; Lettuce leaves

Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Spring Salad

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

1 cup cold cooked green peas
1 cup cold boiled potatoes
½ cup mayonnaise dressing
Lettuce leaves

Directions

Cut the boiled potatoes into dice.
Mix the peas and potatoes together with the mayonnaise dressing.
Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves.

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.

Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,016 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas: Add tender body and mild sweetness, forming most of the salad's bulk.
Potatoes: Provide starchy body and a soft, substantial texture that holds the dressing.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture and richness, binding the peas and potatoes together with fat.