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 ↓
Cherry and Celery Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash and crisp the lettuce.
Stone the cherries.
Chop the celery into small dice.
Assemble and serve
Mix the celery and cherries with enough mayonnaise to moisten thoroughly.
Arrange the mixture on lettuce leaves and top each serving with a spoonful of mayonnaise.
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.
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Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked 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
- Cherries
- Add sweetness and a juicy, tart bite that contrasts with the crisp celery.
- Celery
- Provides crunch and a fresh, slightly savoury flavour to the salad.
- Mayonnaise
- Adds fat and creaminess, binding the mixture and moistening it.
The step that matters
Mix the celery and cherries with enough mayonnaise to moisten thoroughly. Too little mayonnaise leaves the mixture dry and loosely held together, while too much makes it heavy and greasy. Adding it gradually lets you coat the pieces evenly without drowning the crisp celery.
“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.
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