Name: Tenderloin Salad
Ingredients: 1 pound pork tenderloin; 3 stalks celery; 1 cup English walnuts; salt to taste; pepper to taste; mayonnaise dressing

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 ↓

Tenderloin Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cook the pork tenderloin until tender.
Grind the tenderloin finely.
Chop the celery and walnuts.

Make the salad

Mix the ground tenderloin, chopped celery, and walnuts together.
Season with salt and pepper.
Pour mayonnaise dressing over the mixture and serve.

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).
Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,039 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + walnuttop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together401 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork tenderloin: Provides the main protein, which becomes the bulk of the salad once cooked and ground.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch against the soft ground meat.
English walnuts: Add crunch and a rich, slightly bitter nutty flavour to the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture, binding the ground meat, celery and walnuts together.