Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Fruit Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Combine pineapple, grapes, white cherries, pecans, celery, and maraschino cherries in a large bowl.
In a saucepan, boil egg yolks, sugar, butter, mustard, coarse sea salt, paprika, and vinegar together.
While hot, add beaten egg whites to the mixture.
Once cool, stir in port wine and fold in whipped cream gently.
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.
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Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,169 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together709 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
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Pecans + buttertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,416 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Pineapple + pecanstop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together294 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Grape + celerytop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together627 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
Swap the celery
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, grape, pecans, egg, sugar, butter, mustard):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Allspicefits better
- Celerythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, grape, pecans, egg, sugar, butter, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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