Name: Tongue Salad
Ingredients: 1 can of tongue, chopped; 1 can of celery, chopped; Mayonnaise, to taste; Lettuce, for garnish

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 ↓

Tongue Salad

Ingredients

1 can of tongue, chopped
1 can of celery, chopped
Mayonnaise, to taste
Lettuce, for garnish

Directions

Chop the contents of a can of tongue and an equal amount of celery.
Dress the mixture with mayonnaise.
Garnish with lettuce.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue: Provides the main meaty substance and savory flavor of the salad.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch that contrasts the soft meat.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and creaminess, binding the chopped ingredients together with moisture.

“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.