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

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

Prepare

Cut celery into ½ inch pieces and split each piece lengthwise.
Cut tart apples into small cubes.
Sprinkle a pinch of cayenne pepper over the apples and celery.

Dress and serve

Dissolve sugar in lemon juice and mix in chopped parsley.
Add the lemon mixture to the apple and celery.
Toss with mayonnaise.
Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top.
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

What each ingredient does

Celery: Provides the crisp, crunchy texture that gives the salad its body.
Tart apples: Add crisp texture and a fresh, tangy flavor to the salad.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar and mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and moisture that binds the salad and gives it a creamy texture.
Sugar: Sweetens the lemon juice to balance its sharpness and the tart apples.
Parmesan cheese: Adds savory, salty flavor on top of the salad.

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.

“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.