Name: Sweet-potato Salad
Ingredients: boiled sweet potatoes; celery; good dressing

Why it works: Sweet potato and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 162 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet-potato Salad

Ingredients

boiled sweet potatoes
celery
good dressing

Directions

Cut equal amounts of boiled sweet potatoes and celery into dice.
Serve with your choice of 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.

Sweet potato + celerytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together162 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled sweet potatoes: Provide the soft, starchy bulk and body of the salad.
Celery: Adds a crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft potatoes.

“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.