Name: Veal Salad
Ingredients: equal quantities of cooked veal; equal quantities of boiled potatoes; white celery; coarse sea salt; black pepper; cream salad dressing; lettuce; eggs

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 ↓

Veal Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the cooked veal and boiled potatoes into dice.
Chop the white celery.

Assemble and serve

Season the mixture with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and cream salad dressing.
Serve on a bed of lettuce.
Garnish with sliced eggs.

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).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,047 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked veal: Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.
Boiled potatoes: Add starchy body and soft texture that bulks out the salad.
Cream salad dressing: Adds fat and moisture that bind the diced pieces together.
White celery: Adds a crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft meat and potato.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, potato, celery, pepper, cream, egg):

Carrotfits better
Spinachfits better
Leekfits better
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, potato, celery, pepper, cream, egg. 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.