Name: Walnut and Celery Mayonnaise
Ingredients: 2 or 3 strips of white celery, finely shredded; ½ pint of peeled walnuts; 2 tablespoons of stiff mayonnaise sauce; 1 tablespoon of thick cream; salt to taste; pepper to taste; watercress or small red radishes for garnishing

Why it works: Walnut and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 71 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Walnut and Celery Mayonnaise

Ingredients

2 or 3 strips of white celery, finely shredded
½ pint of peeled walnuts
2 tablespoons of stiff mayonnaise sauce
1 tablespoon of thick cream
salt to taste
pepper to taste
watercress or small red radishes for garnishing

Directions

Prepare

Cut the walnuts into small pieces.
Mix the walnuts with the prepared celery.
Season with salt and pepper.
Gradually add the mayonnaise and cream.

Serve

Dress the mixture in a pile on a vegetable dish or a small flat salad bowl.
Garnish with sprigs of watercress or small radishes.
Serve with roast poultry or game.

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 + watercresstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together71 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Celery + watercresstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together167 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts: Provide crunch and a rich, slightly bitter nutty flavour that contrasts the celery.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and fresh, mild flavour to the salad.
Mayonnaise: Binds the chopped ingredients together and adds creamy richness and fat.
Thick cream: Loosens the mayonnaise slightly and adds smoothness and richness to the dressing.

The step that matters

Gradually add the mayonnaise and cream. Adding the dressing slowly and mixing gently keeps the celery crisp and lets the sauce coat evenly instead of becoming watery or greasy.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, sauce, cream, pepper, watercress):

Chestnutfits better
Cashew nutfits about as well
Beansfits about as well
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, sauce, cream, pepper, watercress. 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.

Cream of Celery Soup113 recipes

Celery Stew25 recipes

Celery Croquettes16 recipes

Celery Cream Soup15 recipes

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Walnut and Celery Mayonnaise