Name: Cheese Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup celery, finely chopped; ½ cup broken pecans; ½ cup cheese, cut into tiny cubes; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves

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 ↓

Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

In a bowl, combine the celery, broken pecans, and cheese cubes.
Cover the mixture with mayonnaise dressing.

Serve

Serve the salad on lettuce leaves.

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).
Pecans + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together145 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together614 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + pecanstop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together219 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Celery + cheesetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together647 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery: Adds crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft cheese and dressing.
Broken pecans: Add toasty, nutty flavor and a firm, crunchy texture.
Cheese: Provides rich, savory flavor and a soft, creamy-chewy bite in the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing: Binds the ingredients together and adds fat and moisture for a creamy texture.