Name: Perfection Salad
Ingredients: ½ cup cold water; Juice of 1 lemon; ½ cup tarragon vinegar; ½ cup sugar; 1 pint boiling water; 2 cups chopped celery; 1 tablespoon salt; ¼ can sweet red pepper

Why it works: Lemon and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Perfection Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the gelatin in cold water for 5 minutes.
Add boiling water, vinegar, lemon juice, sugar, and salt to the soaked gelatin.
Strain the mixture and when it begins to set, add the remaining ingredients.
Turn the mixture into a mold and chill.
Serve on a bed of lettuce.

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.

Lemon + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,137 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Tarragon + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together456 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, tarragon, vinegar, sugar, pepper):

Marjoramfits better
Dillfits better
Fennelfits better
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, tarragon, vinegar, sugar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.