Name: Cucumber Salad
Ingredients: Even-sized cucumbers; Cream cheese; Pimentos; Melted butter; Lettuce leaves; Highly seasoned French dressing; Stuffed olives

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 ↓

Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Peel and cut cucumbers in half lengthwise.
Mix cream cheese, pimentos, and melted butter into a paste.
Shape the paste on one half of each cucumber to create a rounded shape.
Chill the cucumbers on ice.
Before serving, cut each half lengthwise into quarters.
Place the quarters on lettuce leaves and drizzle with French dressing.
Slice stuffed olives thinly and arrange them alongside the cucumber quarters.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Cream cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,747 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,003 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cream cheese, butter, olive):

Chivefits better
Tomatofits about as well
Lettucethe original
Welsh onionfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cream cheese, butter, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.