Name: Moulded Celery and Walnut Salad
Ingredients: ½ cup walnuts; 1 cup celery; 1 slice onion; 1 clove; 3 peppercorns; mayonnaise

Why it works: Walnut and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Moulded Celery and Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Clean and cut the celery into half-inch pieces.
Cook the walnuts in boiling salted water with the onion, clove, and peppercorns for 10 minutes.
Cut the walnuts into small pieces.

Assemble and serve

Mix the celery and walnuts with just enough mayonnaise to hold them together.
Mould the mixture as you would for chicken salad, using chicken, tomato, or wine jelly.

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.

Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,668 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,901 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).