Name: Fish Salad
Ingredients: cold broiled or baked fish, free from bones and skin; coarse sea salt; white pepper; lettuce leaves; mayonnaise; slices of lemon

Why it works: Lettuce and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,559 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Flake the fish rather fine and sprinkle lightly with salt and white pepper.
Lay the fish on a bed of lettuce leaves.
Cover the fish with a good mayonnaise.
Garnish with a few slices of lemon on the lettuce.

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 + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,889 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,658 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Fish + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together196 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
White pepper + lettucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together208 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).