Name: Cucumber and Tomato Salad
Ingredients: cucumbers; tomatoes; garden cress; French salad dressing

Why it works: Cucumber and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,405 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber and Tomato Salad

Ingredients

cucumbers
tomatoes
garden cress
French salad dressing

Directions

Slice cucumbers and tomatoes alternately, overlapping them in a wreath around the edge of a salad plate.
Fill the center with garden cress.
Pour French salad dressing over the salad.
Serve immediately.

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.

Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + garden cresstop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Tomato + garden cresstop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1 recipe

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).