Name: Brussel Sprout Salad
Ingredients: Brussels sprouts; Coarse sea salt; Lemon juice; Crisp lettuce leaves; Mayonnaise

Why it works: Lemon and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,559 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Brussel Sprout Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the Brussels sprouts until tender, about 20 minutes.
Drain and set aside to cool.
Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and lemon juice one hour before serving.
Line a salad bowl with crisp lettuce leaves.
Add the sprouts and cover with mayonnaise.

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.

Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Brussels sprouts + lemontop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Brussels sprouts + lettucetop 59% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together0 recipes

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