Name: Plum Salad
Ingredients: large plums; walnut meats, chopped; lettuce; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Plum Salad

Ingredients

large plums
walnut meats, chopped
lettuce
mayonnaise dressing

Directions

Select nice large plums of uniform size.
Cut the plums in halves and remove the stones.
Fill the center of each plum half with chopped walnut meats.
Place the filled plum halves on a bed of lettuce.
Serve with mayonnaise dressing.

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.

Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Plum + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together79 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,035 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Plum + walnuttop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).