Name: Grape Salad
Ingredients: large white or light green grapes; favorite nuts (pecans, hickory, etc.); mayonnaise

Why it works: Nuts and pecans work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 121 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Grape Salad

Ingredients

large white or light green grapes
favorite nuts (pecans, hickory, etc.)
mayonnaise

Directions

Remove grapes from the stem and wash them.
Take out the seeds while preserving the shape of the grapes.
Fill the empty spaces in the grapes with your choice of nuts.
Chill the salad, then arrange it on plates.
Spread a generous amount of mayonnaise over the grapes.
Serve immediately.

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.

Nuts + pecanstop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Grape + pecanstop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together552 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Grape + nutstop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together224 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).