Name: Potatoes Stewed with Celery
Ingredients: 4 medium-sized potatoes; 2 tablespoons minced celery (white and tender part); nut milk (made from almond or peanut butter); salt to taste

Why it works: Potato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,047 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potatoes Stewed with Celery

Ingredients

4 medium-sized potatoes
2 tablespoons minced celery (white and tender part)
nut milk (made from almond or peanut butter)
salt to taste

Directions

Prepare

Peel and slice the potatoes.
Mix the potatoes with the minced celery.

Cook

Cover the mixture with nut milk.
Season with salt to taste.
Bake or stew until tender.

Serve

Serve hot.

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.

Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,047 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Celery + milktop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,491 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Form the bulk of the stew and soften into a tender, starchy base as they cook.
Nut milk: Provides liquid and creaminess, moistening the potatoes as they cook through.
Celery: Adds a mild, fresh savory flavor to the stew.