Name: Chestnut Salad
Ingredients: chestnuts; celery; olives; vinegar; coarse sea salt; mayonnaise

Why it works: Chestnut and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Chestnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil enough chestnuts for four or five per person.
Slice the chestnuts.
Add finely sliced celery and chopped olives.
Mix in a little vinegar and coarse sea salt.
Combine with mayonnaise and garnish as desired.

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.

Chestnut + olivetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together448 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Chestnut + celerytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together231 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,667 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Celery + vinegartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,627 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).