Name: Salade a LA Carltox
Ingredients: cooked chicken, sliced; cold ham or tongue, sliced; mayonnaise; French capers; lettuce; beets, diced; cucumbers, diced; cooked vegetables (optional)

Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,409 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Slice the cooked chicken and arrange it down the center of a long dish, alternating with slices of cold ham or tongue.
Cover the entire arrangement with mayonnaise and sprinkle with French capers.
On the side, prepare a salad of lettuce mixed with diced beets and cucumbers, or a macedoine of cooked vegetables based on the season.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Lettuce + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Capers + lettucetop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together372 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chicken + hamtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Capers + cucumbertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together300 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chicken + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together1,420 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, lettuce, cucumber):

Tarragonbetter flavor fit
Celerybetter flavor fit
Garlicbetter flavor fit
Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, lettuce, cucumber. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).