Name: Tomato Aspic Salad
Ingredients: tomato aspic; lettuce cups; sliced bananas; sliced cucumbers; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber 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 ↓

Tomato Aspic Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato aspic and pour it into ring molds.
Allow the aspic to set.
Turn the set aspic out onto lettuce cups.
Fill the center with sliced bananas and cucumbers mixed with mayonnaise dressing.

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.

Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together198 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Tomato + bananatop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together200 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).