Name: Shrimp Axd Cucumber Salad
Ingredients: shrimps; French dressing; cucumber; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves; sliced cucumbers; 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 ↓

Shrimp Axd Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Break the shrimps into pieces and mix with French dressing.
At serving time, add an equal quantity of cucumber and mix with mayonnaise dressing.
Shape the mixture into a mound and cover with a few whole shrimps and heart leaves of lettuce.
Surround with sliced cucumbers dressed with French dressing.
Flavor with a little 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).