Name: English Walnut Salad
Ingredients: 1 pint walnuts; 1 tablespoon olive oil; 1 cup minced celery; Mayonnaise; Lemon juice; Lettuce; 1 cup chopped apple

Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

English Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Soak the walnuts in lemon juice for 1 hour.
Drain and break the walnuts into pieces.

Combine and chill

Mix the walnuts with the celery and apple.
Pour the olive oil over the mixture and chill for 2 hours.

Serve

Serve in a salad bowl lined with lettuce leaves and dress with mayonnaise.
Garnish with the white leaves of the celery.

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.

Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts: Provide the main crunchy texture and nutty flavor of the salad.
Olive oil: Adds fat and richness, coating the walnuts and vegetables and carrying flavor.
Celery: Adds crisp, fresh crunch and a light vegetal flavor.
Apple: Adds sweetness and crisp juiciness that balances the richer ingredients.
Mayonnaise: Adds creaminess and moisture to bind the salad together.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens flavors and helps keep the walnuts fresh-tasting.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, olive, celery, lemon, lettuce):

Avocadofits better
Limefits better
Cherryfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, olive, celery, lemon, 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.