Name: A Simple Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup walnut meats; 1 cup crisp white celery or tart apples, pared, cored, and cut into cubes; French dressing or mayonnaise

Why it works: Walnut and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

A Simple Salad

Ingredients

1 cup walnut meats
1 cup crisp white celery or tart apples, pared, cored, and cut into cubes
French dressing or mayonnaise

Directions

Combine walnut meats with celery or apples in a bowl.
Cover with French dressing or mayonnaise.
Serve in apple cups or 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.

Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,035 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + celerytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,880 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnut meats: Provide crunch and a rich, slightly bitter nuttiness that contrasts with the soft fruit or celery.
Celery or tart apples: Add crisp texture and moisture, with tart apples also adding acidity and brightness.
French dressing or mayonnaise: Adds moisture, fat and tang that bind the salad and coat the other ingredients.