Name: Egyptian Salad
Ingredients: medium-sized ripe tomatoes; fresh crisp cucumbers; coarse sea salt; vinegar; oil; chopped parsley; onion (optional); lettuce leaves; mayonnaise dressing

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 ↓

Egyptian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the tomatoes and scoop out the insides.
Dice the cucumbers and mix with the tomato insides.
Season the mixture with salt, vinegar, oil, and chopped parsley.
Add onion if desired and mix well.
Stuff the mixture back into the tomatoes.
Serve on lettuce leaves with mayonnaise dressing.

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).
Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cucumber, vinegar, parsley, lettuce):

Beetrootfits better
Mustardfits better
Broccolifits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cucumber, vinegar, parsley, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.