Why it works: Pecans and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓
Cherry Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Remove the seeds from the canned cherries.
Fill the cherries with pecans, walnuts, or almonds.
Serve the filled cherries with mayonnaise or on a bed of lettuce.
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.
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Pecans + lettucetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together145 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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