Name: Red Dressing
Ingredients: 1 cup mayonnaise; 2 tablespoons pimento, pressed through a sieve; 1 tablespoon sweet green pepper, chopped; 2 tablespoons chili sauce or ketchup; 1 tablespoon paprika

Why it works: Pepper and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,303 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Red Dressing

Ingredients

1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons pimento, pressed through a sieve
1 tablespoon sweet green pepper, chopped
2 tablespoons chili sauce or ketchup
1 tablespoon paprika

Directions

Make the dressing

Combine all ingredients in a bowl.
Chill the mixture in the refrigerator.

Serve

Serve on a bed of head lettuce.

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.

Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,303 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Pepper and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise: Provides the creamy base and rich fat that carries the other flavors.
Pimento: Adds mild sweet pepper flavor and a soft red color to the dressing.
Chili sauce or ketchup: Adds sweetness, acidity and tomato flavor with a touch of color.
Sweet green pepper: Contributes fresh, grassy crunch and mild vegetable flavor.
Paprika: Adds warm aroma and deepens the red color of the dressing.

“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.