Name: Apple Salad
Ingredients: tart apples; sugar; celery; lettuce leaves; mayonnaise dressing; walnuts (optional); figs (optional); dates (optional)

Why it works: Lettuce and walnut 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 ↓

Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Select good tart apples and pare them.
Chop the apples finely and add a little sugar to prevent browning.
Add a little chopped celery.
Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves.
Cover with mayonnaise dressing.
Optionally, add walnuts, figs, or dates for variation.

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.

Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Fig + datestop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together318 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Apple + figtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together238 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Walnut + figtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together373 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, celery, lettuce, fig, dates):

Chestnutfits about as well
Walnutthe original
Almondfits about as well
Pistachiofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, celery, lettuce, fig, dates. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.