Name: Apple and Celery Salad
Ingredients: diced apples; finely cut celery; Mayonnaise dressing; red apple parings for garnish; green celery tips for garnish

Why it works: Apple and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,155 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Apple and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Combine equal parts of diced apples and finely cut celery. Mix with Mayonnaise dressing.

Serve

Arrange in mounds on small plates.
Garnish each mound with a star or leaf cut from red apple parings and small sprays of green celery tips.

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.

Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Diced apples: Provides the sweet, crisp body and fresh bulk of the salad.
Finely cut celery: Adds crunch and a fresh, slightly savory bite that contrasts the apples.
Mayonnaise dressing: Coats the apple and celery pieces, adding richness and moisture to bind the salad.

“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.