Name: Celery Relish
Ingredients: 4 bunches celery, roots and leaves removed; 2 red peppers, chopped; 1 teaspoon cloves; 1 teaspoon allspice; 2¼ cups sugar; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 1 teaspoon mustard; 1½ cups vinegar; 1 teaspoon celery seed

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Celery Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the celery and red peppers.
Mix the chopped vegetables in a preserving kettle.
Add sugar, vinegar, salt, and celery seed to the kettle.
Bring the mixture to a gradual boil.
Let it simmer for 1½ hours, stirring occasionally.
Fill bottles with the relish and seal while hot.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 (pepper, clove, allspice, sugar, cinnamon, mustard, vinegar):

Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits better
Gingerfits better
Celerythe original

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