Name: Peanut Salad
Ingredients: fresh roasted peanuts; crisp celery; tender young lettuce leaves; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Peanut Salad

Ingredients

fresh roasted peanuts
crisp celery
tender young lettuce leaves
mayonnaise dressing

Directions

Remove the skins from the fresh roasted peanuts and chop them coarsely.
Chop an equal quantity of crisp celery finely.
Serve the mixture on tender young lettuce leaves and drizzle 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.

Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Peanut + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together170 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Peanut + celerytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together148 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).