Name: Midwinter Salad
Ingredients: 1 head of lettuce; 2 lemons; 3 juicy apples; 1 stalk of celery; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Lemon and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Midwinter Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel the apples and cut them into dice.
Treat the lemons likewise by peeling and dicing them.

Mix and serve

Mix the diced apples and lemons thoroughly with chopped celery.
Cover the mixture with mayonnaise dressing.
Serve the salad on lettuce leaves.

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.

Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Lettuce + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together515 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide crisp texture and natural sweetness that balance the rich dressing.
Lemons: Add acidity and brightness that cut through the creamy dressing.
Celery: Adds crunch and a fresh, slightly savoury note.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and creaminess that coat the fruit and celery.