Name: Stuffed Celery Salad
Ingredients: tender stalks of celery; tartare sauce; lettuce leaves; Roquefort cheese; sherry wine; Ueufchatel cheese; chopped nuts

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 ↓

Stuffed Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Clean the celery stalks and soak them in cold water for a few minutes.
Dry the celery and fill the crevice with tartare sauce.

Serve

Place three or four filled stalks on lettuce leaves and serve.
Alternatively, mash Roquefort cheese with a spoon and mix in a little sherry wine to fill the stalks.
You can also fill the stalks with creamed Ueufchatel cheese mixed with chopped nuts.

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).
Roquefort cheese + cheesetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together21 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Lettuce + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together174 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Roquefort cheese + sherrytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).
Sherry + cheesetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together143 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Tender stalks of celery: Provide the crisp, watery vessel that holds the filling.
Tartare sauce: Adds moisture, tang and richness to the filling.
Roquefort cheese: Contributes a sharp, salty flavour and a creamy texture when mashed.
Ueufchatel cheese: Gives a soft, creamy filling that spreads easily into the crevice.
Chopped nuts: Add crunch and contrast to the soft cheese filling.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, sauce, lettuce, roquefort cheese, sherry, wine, cheese):

Walnutfits better
Beansfits better
Chestnutfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, sauce, lettuce, roquefort cheese, sherry, wine, cheese. 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.