Name: Veal Salad
Ingredients: cold boiled veal; mayonnaise; celery; salt; pepper

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Dice the cold boiled veal into small pieces.
Chop the celery finely.
In a bowl, combine the veal and celery.
Add mayonnaise to taste, and season with salt and pepper.
Mix well and serve chilled.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Veal + celerytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,336 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).