Name: Lenten Salad
Ingredients: 2 pints celery, cut into ½ inch pieces; 1 pint tart apples, cut into small cubes; pinch cayenne pepper; 2 tablespoons lemon juice; 1 tablespoon sugar; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese; lettuce leaves

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lenten Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Combine celery and apples in a bowl.
Sprinkle with cayenne pepper.
Dissolve sugar in lemon juice and add chopped parsley.
Pour the mixture over the celery and apples.
Toss with mayonnaise.
Add Parmesan cheese and mix gently.
Serve on lettuce leaves.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, pepper, lemon, sugar, parsley, parmesan cheese, lettuce):

Limefits better
Avocadofits better
Cherryfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, pepper, lemon, sugar, parsley, parmesan cheese, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.