Name: Lentil Surprise Salad
Ingredients: 1 ounce lemon; 1 ounce cottage cheese; 1 ounce horseradish; 1 ounce cheese; 1 ounce cranberry savory cheese; 1 ounce cereal confections

Why it works: Cottage cheese and cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 126 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Lentil Surprise Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a bowl.
Mix well until evenly combined.
Serve chilled as a small dish.

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.

Cottage cheese + cheesetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together126 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Horseradish + cranberrytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + cranberrytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together210 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + cottage cheesetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together145 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Swap the cranberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, cottage cheese, horseradish, cheese):

Limefits better
Avocadofits better
Pineapplefits better
Cranberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, cottage cheese, horseradish, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.