Name: French Salads
Ingredients: Lettuce leaves or tender inner leaves of celery; Celery stalks, cut into ½ inch pieces; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; 2 tablespoons vinegar; ⅓ cup olive oil; 4 cold boiled potatoes (optional)

Why it works: Lettuce and celery 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 ↓

French Salads

1 quart of salad

Ingredients

Lettuce leaves or tender inner leaves of celery
Celery stalks, cut into ½ inch pieces
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons vinegar
⅓ cup olive oil
4 cold boiled potatoes (optional)

Directions

Shred the lettuce or celery leaves.
Add an equal amount of celery stalks.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
For 1 quart of salad, mix in 2 tablespoons of vinegar and ⅓ cup of olive oil. Mix well and serve.

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.

Lettuce + celerytop 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).
Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,047 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Olive + potatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,458 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce leaves: Forms the bulk of the salad and provides a crisp, tender texture.
Celery stalks: Adds crunch and a fresh, savory flavor to the salad.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the oil.
Olive oil: Coats the leaves and adds richness and body to the dressing.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, celery, pepper, vinegar, olive):

Mustardfits better
Capsicumfits better
Cucumberfits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, celery, pepper, vinegar, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.