Name: Moulded Celery and Walnut Salad
Ingredients: 2 cups celery, cut into half-inch pieces; 1 cup walnuts; 1 slice onion; 1 clove; 3 peppercorns; mayonnaise, to taste

Why it works: Celery and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Moulded Celery and Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

Cook the walnuts in boiling salted water with the onion, clove, and peppercorns for 10 minutes.
Remove the walnuts, cut them into small pieces, and let them cool.

Assemble and mould

Mix the celery and walnuts with just enough mayonnaise to hold them together.
Mould the mixture as you would for chicken salad, using chicken, tomato, or wine jelly.

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 + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,668 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,901 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery: Provides crisp texture and fresh bulk to the salad.
Walnuts: Add a firm, slightly bitter crunch and nutty flavour that contrasts the celery.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and moisture that binds the celery and walnut pieces together.

The step that matters

Cooking the walnuts in seasoned water. Simmering walnuts in water with aromatics infuses them with flavour, while the time keeps them from turning bitter or hard. Cooling them before mixing stops the mayonnaise from thinning and separating.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, walnut, clove):

Carrotfits better
Lettucefits better
Parsnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, walnut, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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Moulded Celery and Walnut Salad