Name: Apple and Celery Salad
Ingredients: 2 firm spicy apples; 2 cups diced celery; ½ cup mayonnaise

Why it works: Apple and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,155 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Apple and Celery Salad

Ingredients

2 firm spicy apples
2 cups diced celery
½ cup mayonnaise

Directions

Prepare

Dice the apples into small pieces.
Combine the diced apples and celery in a bowl.

Assemble and serve

Add the mayonnaise and mix well.
Serve immediately.

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.

Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide crisp texture and a tart, fresh flavor that balances the rich dressing.
Celery: Adds crunch and moisture, keeping the salad fresh-tasting against the creamy dressing.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and creaminess, binding the diced ingredients into a moist, cohesive salad.

“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.