Name: Russian Salads
Ingredients: cold, chopped meats (such as chicken, ham, tongue, beef, lamb, mutton, or veal); mushrooms; anchovies; lettuce; French dressing or sauce Tartare

Why it works: Mushroom and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 292 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Russian Salads

Ingredients

cold, chopped meats (such as chicken, ham, tongue, beef, lamb, mutton, or veal)
mushrooms
anchovies
lettuce
French dressing or sauce Tartare

Directions

Finely chop the cold meats of your choice.
Combine the chopped meats with mushrooms and anchovies.
Serve the mixture on a bed of lettuce.
Drizzle with French dressing or sauce Tartare.

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.

Mushroom + lettucetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together292 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,423 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,480 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lettuce + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).