Name: White Grape and Celery Salad
Ingredients: California grapes, seeded; diced celery; lettuce leaves; oil mayonnaise

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

White Grape and Celery Salad

Ingredients

California grapes, seeded
diced celery
lettuce leaves
oil mayonnaise

Directions

Seed the California grapes.
Combine equal parts of seeded grapes and diced celery.
Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves.
Top with oil mayonnaise.

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 + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Grape + lettucetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together349 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Grape + celerytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together627 recipes

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