Name: English Walnut Salad
Ingredients: 2 cups English walnut meats; 2 cups cooked chicken, cut into small blocks; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon red pepper; 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce; 1 cup finely chopped celery; 2 tablespoons vinegar; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves

Why it works: Walnut and lettuce 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 ↓

English Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

Boil the walnut meats in stock for 20 minutes, then cool and remove the brown skins.

Assemble and serve

Mix the walnuts with the cooked chicken, salt, red pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.
Layer the mixture with chopped celery in a serving dish.
Pour vinegar over the top and mix with enough mayonnaise dressing to coat well.
Serve on lettuce leaves and chill before serving.

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.

Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

English walnut meats: Provide a crunchy texture and a rich, nutty flavour.
Cooked chicken: Supplies the substantial protein body and chewy texture of the salad.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and a fresh, clean crunch against the softer ingredients.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad and coating every ingredient.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts the richness of the mayonnaise.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, pepper, sauce, celery, vinegar, lettuce):

Sesamefits better
Beansfits better
Lentilsfits about as well
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, pepper, sauce, celery, vinegar, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.