Name: Cold Meat Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup cold white meat (veal, lamb, or poultry), cut into small pieces; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; 1 cup celery, chopped (or watercress); Lettuce leaves; Salad dressing of your choice

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Cold Meat Salad

Ingredients

1 cup cold white meat (veal, lamb, or poultry), cut into small pieces
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
1 cup celery, chopped (or watercress)
Lettuce leaves
Salad dressing of your choice

Directions

Prepare

Combine the cold meat, salt, and pepper in a bowl.
Add the chopped celery (or watercress) and mix well.

Serve

Heap the mixture onto lettuce leaves.
Pour your preferred salad dressing over the top.
Serve ice cold.

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 + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Meat + celerytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,880 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold white meat: Forms the main body of the salad, providing protein and substance.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch against the soft meat.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and flavour, binding the salad together.