Name: Cheese Salad
Ingredients: cottage cheese; walnuts; lettuce leaves; salad dressing

Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cheese Salad

Ingredients

cottage cheese
walnuts
lettuce leaves
salad dressing

Directions

Season the cottage cheese to taste.
Shape the seasoned cottage cheese into small balls.
Place half a walnut on each cheese ball.
Serve on a lettuce leaf with salad dressing.

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.

Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cottage cheese + walnuttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together46 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cottage cheese + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).