Name: Suffolk Salad
Ingredients: tender lettuces; lean ham; hard-boiled eggs; English salad sauce; cold chicken or veal (optional)

Why it works: Ham and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Suffolk Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Fill a salad bowl halfway to three-quarters full with shredded tender lettuces.
Layer in minced lean ham and hard-boiled eggs or their yolks alternately.
Dress the salad with English salad sauce just before serving.
Optionally, add thinly sliced cold chicken or veal around the inside of the bowl.
You can also slice the ham and eggs instead of mincing them.

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.

Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Lettuce + chickentop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,421 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Lettuce + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ham + saucetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,314 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).