Name: Italian Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup boiled beets, chopped fine; ¾ cup boiled ham, chopped; 1 cup celery, cut thin; Salad dressing; Celery leaves for garnish

Why it works: Ham and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,608 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Italian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine the boiled beets, boiled ham, and celery.
Mix in a good amount of salad dressing.
Garnish with celery leaves 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.

Ham + celerytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,608 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled beets: Provide the main colour and an earthy, lightly sweet flavour.
Boiled ham: Adds savoury, salty flavour and a firm, chewy texture.
Celery: Contributes crisp texture and a fresh, slightly bitter note.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and tangy, creamy flavour that binds the salad together.

“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.