Name: Walnut Salad
Ingredients: 2 cups green peas; ¼ cup butter; ½ pound fresh walnuts; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Peas and walnut work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Walnut Salad

Ingredients

2 cups green peas
¼ cup butter
½ pound fresh walnuts
mayonnaise dressing

Directions

Stew the green peas with butter and a little water until fully cooked, then let them cool.
Chop the walnuts after removing the skins.
Mix the chopped walnuts with the cooled peas.
Cover the mixture 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.

Peas + walnuttop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together170 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,832 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,887 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas: Form the bulk of the salad and provide its soft, tender texture once stewed.
Butter: Adds richness and fat to the stewed peas, softening their flavour and mouthfeel.
Walnuts: Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft peas.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds creamy moisture and fat that binds and coats the salad.