Name: Spanish Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup celery, chopped; 3 cooked beets, chopped; 2 cold potatoes, chopped; ½ raw apple, chopped; 6 boneless sardines, skin removed; French dressing; Lettuce for serving

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Spanish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the celery, cooked beets, cold potatoes, and raw apple into small pieces.
Remove the skin from the sardines and mash them into a pulp.

Assemble and serve

Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly.
Pour French dressing over the mixture and serve on a bed of lettuce.

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 + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,047 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Celery + appletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together515 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines: Provide the main savoury, oily flavour and a soft, pulpy body to the salad.
Potatoes: Add starchy bulk and a soft texture that holds the other pieces together.
Beets: Contribute sweetness, earthy flavour and a deep colour to the salad.
Apple: Adds crisp texture and a mild sweetness that balances the richer ingredients.