Name: Cold Meat Salad
Ingredients: cold meat (chicken, lamb, or veal), cut into uniform bits; celery, finely chopped; Green Seal Salad Dressing; green sweet peppers, cut into strips; red sweet peppers, cut into strips

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Meat Salad

Ingredients

cold meat (chicken, lamb, or veal), cut into uniform bits
celery, finely chopped
Green Seal Salad Dressing
green sweet peppers, cut into strips
red sweet peppers, cut into strips

Directions

Combine the cold meat and finely chopped celery in a bowl.
Mix in an equal measure of Green Seal Salad Dressing.
Garnish the salad with strips of green and red sweet peppers.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Meat + celerytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,880 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat: Forms the bulk of the salad, providing the main substance and chewy texture.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and fresh, slightly vegetal crunch against the soft meat.
Green seal salad dressing: Moistens the meat and celery and carries the flavour through the salad.