Name: Celery and Nut Salad
Ingredients: 1 bunch celery, chopped fine; ½ lb English walnut kernels; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; Lettuce leaves; French dressing; Halved, seeded white grapes

Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Celery and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the celery finely and combine it with the walnut kernels.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Assemble and serve

Place the mixture on a bed of lettuce leaves.
Drizzle with French dressing.
Top the salad with halved, seeded white grapes.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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).
Walnut + grapetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,427 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery: Provides the crisp, crunchy texture that gives the salad its body.
English walnut kernels: Add rich, slightly bitter nuttiness and a firm, crunchy texture.
French dressing: Adds moisture and tangy, sweet-sharp flavour that coats the salad.
White grapes: Add juicy sweetness that contrasts with the bitter walnuts and savory celery.