Name: Olive Salad
Ingredients: 25 olives, stoned and chopped; 2 small cucumbers, chopped; 2 cooked beets, diced; 2 boiled potatoes, diced; Salt and pepper to taste; Lettuce leaves for serving; Dressing of your choice; Hard-boiled egg for decoration (optional)

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 ↓

Olive Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

Combine the chopped olives, cucumbers, diced beets, and diced potatoes in a bowl.
Season with salt and pepper, then mix well.

Serve

Serve the salad on lettuce leaves.
Add your preferred dressing and decorate with a hard-boiled egg if desired.

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 + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Olive + potatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,458 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Olives: Adds a briny, savoury flavour that contrasts with the sweet beets.
Cucumbers: Add crisp, moist texture and freshness to the salad.
Beets: Add sweetness, earthy flavour and a vivid colour.
Potatoes: Add bulk and a soft, starchy body that holds the salad together.

Swap the potato

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

Spinachfits better
Capsicumfits better
Chivefits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, cucumber, pepper, lettuce, egg. 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.