Name: Waldorf Salad
Ingredients: 2 medium-sized apples, diced; 4 stalks of celery, diced; ½ pound walnuts, broken into small pieces; Oil mayonnaise; Whipped cream

Why it works: Celery and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Waldorf Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Dice the apples and celery into small pieces.
Break the walnuts into small pieces.

Combine and serve

Mix the apples, celery, and walnuts together.
Combine with oil mayonnaise and dilute with whipped cream.

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.

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 + walnuttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,051 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,863 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Walnut + creamtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).