Name: Walnut Salad No. 1
Ingredients: ½ pound shelled walnuts; 1 cup cooked chicken, shredded; 2 cups celery, finely chopped; mayonnaise or boiled dressing; Boston lettuce leaves; lemon wedges

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 ↓

Walnut Salad No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Blanch the walnuts and cut them into small pieces.

Make the salad

In a bowl, combine the walnuts, chicken, and celery.
Mix well with mayonnaise or boiled dressing.

Serve

Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves with a lemon wedge on each plate.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts: Provide the crunchy texture and nutty flavor that give the salad its body.
Chicken: Supplies the protein base and the bulk that makes the salad substantial.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mildly vegetal crunch to the salad.
Mayonnaise or boiled dressing: Binds the ingredients together and adds moisture and richness.