Name: Lettuce with Celery Mixed
Ingredients: 1 head of lettuce; 1 ½ cups celery, cut into 1.5-inch pieces; Mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and celery 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 ↓

Lettuce with Celery Mixed

Ingredients

1 head of lettuce
1 ½ cups celery, cut into 1.5-inch pieces
Mayonnaise dressing

Directions

Cut the celery lengthwise into four or five pieces.
Mix the celery with the lettuce.
Serve with mayonnaise dressing.

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 + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce: Forms the leafy base of the salad and supplies crisp, cool texture.
Celery: Adds crunch and a fresh, mildly vegetal flavour that contrasts with the lettuce.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and creaminess, coating the leaves and celery to carry flavour and moisture.

“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.