Name: Spinach-and-egg Salad
Ingredients: cooked spinach; coarse sea salt; black pepper; olive oil; lemon juice; butter; cold boiled eggs; mayonnaise; shredded lettuce

Why it works: Spinach and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Spinach-and-egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the cooked spinach finely and season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, olive oil, and lemon juice.
Press the mixture into well-buttered cups or molds.
Turn the spinach out onto nests of shredded lettuce.
Arrange the whites of the boiled eggs, cut into rings, around the base of the spinach.
Press a star of mayonnaise in the center of each egg ring.
Pass the yolks through a sieve and sprinkle over the tops of the spinach mounds.
Place the round ends of the egg whites on top.

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.

Spinach + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together427 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Spinach + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,109 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 (spinach, pepper, olive, lemon, butter, egg):

Asparagusfits better
Chivefits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, pepper, olive, lemon, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.