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Salad

Combination Salad

A fresh salad of chopped peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and lettuce tossed with French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Combination Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green pepper, tomato, red pepper, cucumbers, and onion separately.

  2. Measure each ingredient and mix them together.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on a bed of shredded lettuce.

  2. Drizzle with French salad dressing before serving.

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.

  1. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Green pepper
Adds crisp texture and fresh, slightly bitter flavour.
Tomato
Adds juiciness and moisture to the salad.
Red pepper
Adds crunch and mild sweetness.
Cucumbers
Adds cool, crisp texture and moisture.
Onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavour.
French salad dressing
Adds fat and acidity that carry flavour across the vegetables.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, tomato, cucumber, lettuce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, tomato, cucumber, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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