Name: Watercress Salad
Ingredients: Crisp watercress; Thin slices of sour apple; Mayonnaise; Diced hard boiled eggs or pignolia nuts

Why it works: Watercress and apple work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Watercress Salad

Ingredients

Crisp watercress
Thin slices of sour apple
Mayonnaise
Diced hard boiled eggs or pignolia nuts

Directions

Soak the watercress in ice water and dry it carefully with a soft towel.
Arrange the watercress in salad dishes and top with thin slices of sour apple.
Serve with mayonnaise and garnish with diced hard boiled eggs or pignolia nuts.

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 + appletop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Watercress + eggtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together638 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Apple + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,461 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).