Name: Cold Corn Beef
Ingredients: Any kind of green garnish; Pickled beets, sliced; Cresses; Thyme; Celery; Lettuce; Olives; Capers; Lemons, sliced

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Corn Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Arrange the salad in a shapely mass on the dish.
Let the edge be ornamented with cresses, thyme, celery, or lettuce.
Use one or all of these for decoration.
Place a double row of olives around the edge of the dish.
Serve 2 or 3 olives to each person with the salad.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,193 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, lettuce, olive, capers, lemon):

Tarragonfits better
Parsleyfits better
Marjoramfits better
Celerythe original

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