Name: The Dinner-pail
Ingredients: crisp lettuce leaves; ice; Durkee’s salad dressing; buttered bread; cooked chicken

Why it works: Bread and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,258 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

The Dinner-pail

Ingredients

Directions

Place crisp lettuce leaves in a bowl with a small lump of ice.
Cover the bowl with a cloth and then with paper, securing it in the bottom of the basket.
Pour a few spoonfuls of Durkee’s salad dressing into a wide-mouthed bottle and cork it.
At lunchtime, drain the lettuce, line a bowl with the leaves, place the chicken on top, and pour the dressing over the chicken.

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.

Bread + chickentop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,258 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).
Lettuce + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together602 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Lettuce + chickentop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,421 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).