Name: Plain Cheese Salad
Ingredients: Edam cheese or American cheese; lettuce leaves; French dressing

Why it works: Cheese and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 614 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Plain Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Edam cheese or American cheese
lettuce leaves
French dressing

Directions

Cut the Edam or American cheese into thin pieces.
Scatter the cheese over the lettuce leaves.
Serve with French 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.

Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together614 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

Edam cheese or american cheese: Provides the main savory flavor and creamy, mild bite in the salad.
Lettuce leaves: Forms the crisp, cool base that holds the cheese and dressing.
French dressing: Adds moisture, sweetness, and acidity to tie the salad together.

“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.