Name: Grape Fruit Salad
Ingredients: 1/2 grapefruit per person; 1/4 cup celery, chopped; 70g walnuts, shelled and broken into small pieces; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce for serving

Why it works: Grapefruit and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Grape Fruit Salad

Ingredients

1/2 grapefruit per person
1/4 cup celery, chopped
70g walnuts, shelled and broken into small pieces
mayonnaise dressing
lettuce for serving

Directions

Prepare

Prepare half a grapefruit for each person.
Chop celery to equal half the amount of grapefruit.
Shell and break walnuts into small pieces, using about 70g per person.

Assemble and serve

Mix grapefruit, celery, and walnuts with mayonnaise dressing.
Serve the mixture on a bed of lettuce.

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.

Grapefruit + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together118 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Grapefruit + celerytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together58 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit: Provides juicy, tart flavour and a fresh bright contrast to the rich dressing.
Walnuts: Add crunch and a toasty, slightly bitter flavour that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and creaminess that binds the fruit, celery and walnuts together.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and a mild, fresh vegetable crunch.