Name: Pea Salad
Ingredients: 2 cups cold peas; 1 cucumber, sliced and quartered; Lettuce leaves; 3 tablespoons oil; 1 tablespoon vinegar; ½ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; Few drops of onion juice

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pea Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Combine cold peas and cucumber in a bowl.
Place the mixture on lettuce leaves.
In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and onion juice.

Serve

Drizzle the dressing over the salad and serve.

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.

Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Peas + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together629 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,050 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas: Provide the main body and sweet, fresh bulk of the salad.
Oil: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the dressing.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, lettuce, vinegar, pepper, onion):

Sesamefits better
Chickpeafits better
Lentilsfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, lettuce, vinegar, pepper, onion. 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.