Name: Celery and Cream Cheese Salad
Ingredients: ½ cup finely chopped celery; 1 cream cheese; French dressing; paprika; radishes

Why it works: Celery and radish work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 101 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Celery and Cream Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the finely chopped celery with the cream cheese.
Form the mixture into small balls.
Arrange the balls on lettuce leaves.
Pour French dressing over the salad.
Sprinkle with paprika and garnish with radishes cut into fancy shapes.

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.

Celery + radishtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together101 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Celery + cream cheesetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together169 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Cream cheese + radishtop 38% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).