Name: Pear Salad
Ingredients: Bartlett pears; blanched almonds; chopped celery; fruit salad dressing No. 3

Why it works: Almond and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 485 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pear Salad

Ingredients

Bartlett pears
blanched almonds
chopped celery
fruit salad dressing No. 3

Directions

Place half a Bartlett pear on a lettuce leaf.
Stick blanched almonds into the pear.
Surround the pear with chopped celery.
Add a spoonful of fruit salad dressing No. 3.

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.

Almond + celerytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together485 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Bartlett pear + almondtop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together9 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).
Bartlett pear + celerytop 37% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Bartlett pears: Provide the sweet, juicy base that the other elements surround.
Blanched almonds: Add a crunchy texture that contrasts with the soft pear.
Chopped celery: Adds a crisp, fresh texture around the pear.