Name: Lettuce Salad
Ingredients: 1 head of crisp lettuce; 1 cup finely chopped celery; 1 cup English walnuts; cream salad dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

1 head of crisp lettuce
1 cup finely chopped celery
1 cup English walnuts
cream salad dressing

Directions

Prepare and layer

Cut the lettuce into bite-sized pieces.
In a salad dish, layer the lettuce, sprinkle with chopped celery, and add a layer of walnuts.
Drizzle enough cream salad dressing to cover the layer.
Repeat the layers until the dish is full, finishing with more dressing on top.

Serve

For a decorative touch, serve in scooped-out tomato shells.

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.

Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,863 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Walnut + creamtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce: Forms the crisp bulk of the salad and holds the layers together.
Celery: Adds a crunchy texture and fresh flavor between the lettuce layers.
English walnuts: Add crunch and a nutty, slightly bitter flavor that contrasts the dressing.
Cream salad dressing: Adds richness and moisture, coating the layers and softening the lettuce.