Name: Cheese Salad
Ingredients: ½ pound grated cheese; 1 tablespoon olive oil; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 hard-boiled egg; 1 teaspoon sugar; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; 1 tablespoon onion or vinegar; 1 teaspoon prepared mustard

Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Rub together the yolk of the hard-boiled egg and olive oil to form a paste.
Add salt, cayenne pepper, sugar, and mustard; mix well.
Stir in the grated cheese until combined.
Add onion or vinegar and mix again.
Serve in crab shells or small china dishes with biscuits and butter.

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.

Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,950 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,805 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

Grated cheese: Provides the main body and rich flavour of the salad.
Hard-boiled egg yolk: Emulsifies with the olive oil to form a smooth, paste-like base.
Olive oil: Adds fat and smoothness, carrying the seasonings through the mixture.
Onion or vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the rich cheese and egg.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, olive, egg, sugar, pepper, mustard):

Capsicumfits better
Lettucefits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, olive, egg, sugar, pepper, mustard. 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.