Name: Yorkshire Ploughmans Salad
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons of sauce; lettuce, shredded; pepper to taste; young onions; 4-5 artichokes; young carrots, sliced; potatoes, diced; minced tarragon or other herbs

Why it works: Lettuce and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 101 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Yorkshire Ploughmans Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Combine the sauce with the shredded lettuce and season with pepper.
Mix in the young onions for added flavor.
Prepare the artichokes by removing the insides and cutting them into quarters.
In a large bowl, arrange the artichokes, sliced carrots, and diced potatoes.
Sprinkle with minced tarragon or your preferred herbs.

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 + artichoketop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together101 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together425 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Artichoke + tarragontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together60 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 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

Artichokes: Provide the main bulk and a tender, mild vegetable texture.
Potatoes: Add body and starch so the salad feels substantial.
Lettuce: Forms the crisp, cool base that holds the dressing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, lettuce, pepper, artichoke, carrot, potato, tarragon):

Beetrootfits better
Turnipfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, lettuce, pepper, artichoke, carrot, potato, tarragon. 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.