Name: Sturgeon in an Italian Salad
Ingredients: 2 or 3 cabbage lettuces; a little chervil; a little sliced cucumber; sturgeon; cucumber for garnish; beetroot for garnish

Why it works: Chervil and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 126 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sturgeon in an Italian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Shred and wash the cabbage lettuces.
Finely chop the chervil and slice the cucumber.
Place the lettuces in the center of a dish.
Arrange the sturgeon over the lettuces in a star shape.
Garnish around the dish with additional cucumber and beetroot.

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.

Chervil + beetroottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together126 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cucumber + beetroottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together345 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Chervil + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together144 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cabbage + beetroottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together377 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together722 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chervil, cucumber, sturgeon, beetroot):

Lettucefits better
Shallotfits better
Horseradishfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chervil, cucumber, sturgeon, beetroot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.