Name: A Dressed Salad
Ingredients: 2 heads of lettuce; 1 endive; 1 bunch of cress; 6 spring onions; 1 bunch of radishes; 2 hard-boiled eggs

Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 284 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

Prepare

Wash and dry the lettuce, endive, cress, and radishes.
Chop the lettuce and endive into bite-sized pieces.
Slice the spring onions and radishes.
Peel and chop the hard-boiled eggs.

Assemble and serve

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and toss gently.
Dress with your choice of vinaigrette or dressing before serving.

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 + endivetop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together284 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + radishtop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together58 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + radishtop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together323 recipes

Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).
Endive + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together214 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce: Forms the crisp, leafy base of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and substance through their protein and yolk fat.
Radishes: Add a sharp, peppery bite and crunch.
Spring onions: Add mild onion flavour and aroma.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, endive, radish, egg):

Cucumberbetter flavor fit
Beetrootbetter flavor fit
Spinachbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, endive, radish, egg. 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).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.