Name: Tuna Salad
Ingredients: 1 can White Star Brand Tuna, diced; 1 cup celery, chopped; mayonnaise dressing made with Ehmann olive oil; sliced tomatoes; string beans; cucumbers; lettuce; French dressing; paprika

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tuna Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Dice the tuna and place it in a bowl.
Add the chopped celery and mix with mayonnaise dressing.
Serve the tuna salad with sliced tomatoes, string beans, cucumbers, and lettuce.
Drizzle with French dressing and sprinkle with paprika.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,539 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,713 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together500 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, tomato, beans, cucumber, lettuce):

Capersfits better
Cuminfits better
Garlicfits better
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, tomato, beans, cucumber, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.