Name: Waldorf Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup tart apples, chopped; 1 cup celery, chopped; ½ cup broken English walnuts or mixed nuts; Lettuce leaves; Mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Waldorf Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the apples and celery into small pieces.
Combine equal quantities of apples and celery with half as much nuts.

Serve

Serve the mixture on a bed of lettuce leaves.
Drizzle with mayonnaise 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.

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 + 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).
Apple + celerytop 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

Tart apples: Provide crisp texture and a sharp, tart flavor that balances the dressing.
Celery: Adds crunch and freshness, giving the salad a crisp, juicy bite.
Walnuts: Add crunch and a rich, slightly bitter nuttiness to contrast the soft fruit.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds creaminess and fat that coats the fruit and celery and binds the salad.