Name: Celery Salad
Ingredients: 2 cups celery, chopped; 1 sweet apple, chopped; ½ cup pecan halves; 2 tablespoons oil or dressing; Lettuce leaves for serving

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 ↓

Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the tender white stalks of celery into small bits.
Add the chopped apple and pecan halves.

Serve

Serve on lettuce leaves and drizzle with oil or dressing.

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).
Celery + appletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together515 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery: Provides the crisp, fresh texture that forms the body of the salad.
Sweet apple: Adds natural sweetness and a crisp bite that balances the celery.
Pecan halves: Contribute crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor against the softer ingredients.
Oil or dressing: Adds moisture and fat that carries flavor and coats the salad ingredients.