Name: Nut Salad
Ingredients: equal parts fresh English walnut meats, broken into small pieces; crisp celery, cut into 1-inch lengths; mayonnaise dressing; watercress or head lettuce

Why it works: Walnut and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 71 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Nut Salad

Ingredients

equal parts fresh English walnut meats, broken into small pieces
crisp celery, cut into 1-inch lengths
mayonnaise dressing
watercress or head lettuce

Directions

Make the salad

Combine equal parts of walnut meats and celery in a bowl.
Mix in a good amount of mayonnaise dressing.

Rest and serve

Let the mixture stand for 1 hour before serving.
Serve on a bed of watercress or head 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + watercresstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together71 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together167 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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: Add crunch and a rich, slightly bitter nuttiness that balances the dressing.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and fresh moisture that contrasts with the soft dressing.
Mayonnaise dressing: Binds the pieces together and adds fat and creaminess for moisture and richness.