Name: Shrimp and Cucumber Salad
Ingredients: shrimp; cucumbers; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves; French dressing; onion juice; salt

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 ↓

Shrimp and Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Break the shrimp into pieces.
Cut cucumbers into cubes and chill them in salted water.
Mix the shrimp and cucumbers with mayonnaise dressing.
Shape the mixture into a mound on a serving plate.
Cover lightly with whole shrimp and lettuce leaves.
Surround the mound with sliced cucumbers dressed with French dressing flavored with onion juice.

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).
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).
Shrimp + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Shrimp + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together430 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).