Name: Waldorf Salad
Ingredients: 2 cups celery, cut into small pieces; 1 cup apples, sliced thin; 1 cup mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Celery and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,133 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

2 cups celery, cut into small pieces
1 cup apples, sliced thin
1 cup mayonnaise dressing

Directions

In a bowl, combine the celery and sliced apples.
Pour the mayonnaise dressing over the mixture and toss gently to coat.

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.

The picture is an illustration, not a photo of this recipe · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Celery + appletop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,133 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

Celery: Provides crisp, fresh texture that contrasts with the soft dressing.
Apples: Adds crunch and a mild sweetness that balances the rich dressing.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and creaminess that coats the vegetables and fruit and binds them together.

“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.