Name: Apple Salad
Ingredients: large red apples; celery; English walnuts; mayonnaise

Why it works: Celery and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Apple Salad

Ingredients

large red apples
celery
English walnuts
mayonnaise

Directions

Choose the largest and brightest red apples and cut a deep slice from each at the stem end.
Scoop out the pulp from the apples and smooth the inside.
Drop both the apples and their covers into cold water to prevent discoloration until needed.
Wipe each apple dry and polish until shiny.
Make a salad with chopped celery and English walnuts mixed with very stiff mayonnaise.
Fill the apples with the salad and carefully fit each cover back on to hide the cut.

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 + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Apple + walnuttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,051 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).