Name: Salad of Corned Beef
Ingredients: Slices of cold corned beef; Lettuce leaves; 2 hard boiled eggs; Mayonnaise or salad dressing

Why it works: Beef and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 662 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salad of Corned Beef

Ingredients

Slices of cold corned beef
Lettuce leaves
2 hard boiled eggs
Mayonnaise or salad dressing

Directions

Dip the slices of corned beef in the salad dressing.
Layer the beef in a dish with alternate layers of lettuce leaves.
Garnish with hard boiled eggs cut into slices.

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.

Beef + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together662 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,301 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef: Provides the main savory meat base and the bulk of the salad.
Mayonnaise or salad dressing: Adds moisture and richness, coating the beef so it stays tender and flavourful.
Lettuce leaves: Adds crisp texture and fresh body between the layers.
Hard boiled eggs: Adds creamy richness and contrast in texture as a garnish.