Name: Fillets of Salmon in an Italian Salad
Ingredients: 2 or 3 cabbage lettuces; 1 beet root; 1 cucumber; 4 anchovies; fresh tarragon; fresh chervil; 2 boiled eggs; lobster spawn

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fillets of Salmon in an Italian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the cabbage lettuces, remove the stalks, and cut them into large shreds.
Slice the beet root and cucumber.
Wash, pick, and cut the anchovies into long shreds.
Chop the tarragon and chervil.
Chop the boiled eggs separately into yolks and whites.
Rub the lobster spawn through a fine sieve and place it on a plate.
If available, boil cauliflowers or French beans and add them to the salad for garnish.

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.

Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together824 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cucumber + cherviltop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together144 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together274 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Cabbage + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together722 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + cherviltop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together113 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 (cucumber, tarragon, chervil, egg, lobster):

Lettucefits better
Chivefits better
Shallotfits better
Cabbagethe original

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