Name: Nasturtium Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup green seed pods, chopped; 1 small onion, chopped; 1 bunch parsley, chopped; 1 stalk celery, chopped; mayonnaise; hard boiled eggs, sliced; nasturtium buds and flowers for garnish; tender nasturtium leaves for serving

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Nasturtium Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the green seed pods, onion, parsley, and celery.
Mix the chopped ingredients with mayonnaise.
Garnish the salad with slices of hard boiled eggs, nasturtium buds, and flowers.
Serve the salad on a bed of tender nasturtium leaves.

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.

Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Celery + eggtop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,334 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).