Name: Spring Salad
Ingredients: 1 head lettuce; 1 or 2 hard boiled eggs; Watercress; 2 or 3 tomatoes; Mustard and cress; 1 cucumber; 1 endive; A few radishes; Salad dressing

Why it works: Watercress and endive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 45 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash and dry the vegetables by shaking them in a towel.
Shred the lettuce and slice the cucumber.

Assemble and serve

Arrange all the ingredients in a salad bowl that has been rubbed inside with a cut onion.
Serve salad dressing separately.

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.

Watercress + endivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together45 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together284 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce: Forms the crisp, leafy base that gives the salad its bulk and texture.
Hard boiled eggs: Add protein-rich body and a soft, creamy contrast to the crisp greens.
Tomatoes: Contribute juiciness and moisture, plus a light acidity to the salad.
Cucumber: Adds cool, watery crunch that refreshes the other ingredients.
Endive: Adds a slightly bitter crispness that balances the sweeter vegetables.

Swap the tomato

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

Beetrootfits better
Horseradishfits better
Chivefits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, watercress, mustard, cucumber, endive, radish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.