Name: Stuffed Celery Salad
Ingredients: 4 ounces Neufchatel cheese or cottage cheese; ½ cup English walnuts, chopped; 4 stalks celery, cut into 2-inch pieces; Lettuce leaves; Mayonnaise

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 ↓

Stuffed Celery Salad

Ingredients

4 ounces Neufchatel cheese or cottage cheese
½ cup English walnuts, chopped
4 stalks celery, cut into 2-inch pieces
Lettuce leaves
Mayonnaise

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, mix the Neufchatel or cottage cheese with the chopped walnuts.
Fill each piece of celery with the cheese and walnut mixture.

Serve

Arrange the stuffed celery on a bed of lettuce.
Drizzle mayonnaise over the stuffed celery before serving.

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.

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).
Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Cheese + walnuttop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together410 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together614 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Neufchatel or cottage cheese: Provides a creamy, mild base that holds the walnuts together and fills the celery.
English walnuts: Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft cheese.
Celery: Serves as the crisp, edible vessel that holds the filling.
Mayonnaise: Adds moisture and richness to the finished salad.