Name: Celery Sandwich
Ingredients: 1 cup chopped celery; ½ cup chopped English walnuts; ½ cup rich mayonnaise dressing; 4 slices of bread; 2 tablespoons butter

Why it works: Celery and walnut 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 ↓

Celery Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

In a bowl, combine chopped celery and English walnuts.
Moisten the mixture with rich mayonnaise dressing.

Assemble and serve

Spread butter on one side of each slice of bread.
Place the celery and walnut mixture between two slices of bread, buttered side in.
Cut the sandwich into halves or quarters and serve.

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 + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,832 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,110 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Walnut + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together714 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery: Adds crisp, fresh texture and a mild vegetal crunch to the filling.
English walnuts: Contribute crunch and a rich, slightly bitter nutty flavour that balances the filling.
Rich mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture and fat, binding the chopped filling and keeping it from drying out.
Bread: Provides the structure that holds the filling and absorbs little moisture when buttered.
Butter: Forms a fat barrier on the bread that helps keep the filling from soaking through.