Name: Salad with Celery Seed
Ingredients: cooked chicken or turkey, chopped; cabbage, finely chopped; celery vinegar; fresh celery seeds; mustard; cayenne pepper; white lettuce (optional)

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salad with Celery Seed

Ingredients

Directions

If celery is unavailable, chop cooked chicken or turkey.
Mix in half the amount of finely chopped cabbage that has been soaked in celery vinegar for 1 hour.
Add a few fresh celery seeds to the dressing prepared for chicken salad.
Combine all ingredients thoroughly.
For extra flavor, add a little more mustard and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
If cabbage is not available, use prepared white lettuce instead.

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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the lettuce

The recipe marks lettuce as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cabbage, celery, vinegar, mustard, pepper):

Lettucethe original
Broccolifits about as well
Horseradishfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cabbage, celery, vinegar, mustard, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.