Name: Mixed Salad
Ingredients: 1 large lettuce; 1 endive; 1 bunch mustard greens or watercress; 3 tomatoes; 1 small cucumber; 1 hard-boiled egg; 2 tablespoons thick mayonnaise sauce

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

Mixed Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

Wash the lettuce and endive thoroughly, then break them into small pieces.
Add the mustard greens and watercress, washed well, and drain them in a cloth.

Assemble and serve

In a basin, combine the greens with 2 tablespoons of thick mayonnaise sauce and the thinly sliced cucumber.
Toss everything well and pile it into a salad bowl.
Decorate with sliced tomatoes and hard-boiled egg.

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.

Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together284 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together121 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together87 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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.
Mayonnaise sauce: Adds fat and creaminess that coats the leaves and gives richness.
Cucumber: Adds cool, watery crunch that contrasts with the leaves.
Tomatoes: Add juiciness and a touch of acidity to the salad.

Swap the tomato

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

Beetrootfits better
Chivefits better
Horseradishfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, endive, mustard, cucumber, egg, sauce. 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.