Name: Combination Salad
Ingredients: Lettuce; 1 slice of pineapple; Cream cheese; Cream; Stuffed olives; Pimento strips; Boiled dressing or mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Combination Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

Place a bed of lettuce on a serving plate.
Spread cream cheese mixed with cream on the slice of pineapple.
Place the pineapple on the lettuce.
Put a stuffed olive in the center of the pineapple.
Arrange strips of pimento over the pineapple to resemble a flower.

Serve

Serve with boiled dressing or mayonnaise dressing on the side.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together271 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pineapple + cream cheesetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together250 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Pineapple + olivetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together660 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,003 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese: Provides a rich, creamy topping that softens the sharpness of the fruit.
Pineapple: Adds sweetness and acidity as the base of the salad.
Boiled dressing or mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture and tang to balance the richness of the cheese.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, cream cheese, cream, olive):

Capsicumfits about as well
Tomatofits about as well
Lettucethe original
Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, cream cheese, cream, olive. 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.