Name: Apple and Celery Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup tart apples, cut into thin slices; 1 cup celery, cut into half-inch blocks; ¾ cup mayonnaise dressing; Lettuce leaves; Chopped pecan nut meats (optional, ⅓ cup or more)

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 ↓

Apple and Celery Salad

Ingredients

1 cup tart apples, cut into thin slices
1 cup celery, cut into half-inch blocks
¾ cup mayonnaise dressing
Lettuce leaves
Chopped pecan nut meats (optional, ⅓ cup or more)

Directions

Prepare

Chill all ingredients well.
Line a salad bowl with lettuce leaves.

Make and serve the salad

Mix the apples, celery, and ½ cup of the mayonnaise dressing.
Turn the salad mixture into the bowl and top with the remaining dressing.
If using, add chopped pecans and slightly increase the amount of dressing.

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).
Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together515 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Lettuce + meattop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together579 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,880 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples: Provide crisp texture and a tart flavour that balances the rich dressing.
Celery: Adds crunch and a fresh, slightly savoury bite to the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing: Supplies fat and creaminess that coats the apples and celery and adds moisture.