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Salad

Batavia and Celery Salad

A salad of batavia lettuce, celery, watercress, seasoned with salt, pepper, and dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Batavia and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Trim, wash, and drain the batavia lettuce.

  2. Divide the lettuce into small pieces and drain in a cloth or salad basket.

Assemble and dress

  1. Mix the lettuce with the shredded celery and watercress.

  2. Place the mixture in a salad bowl.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Pour salad dressing over the salad.

  5. Just before serving, mix the salad thoroughly.

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.

  1. Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Batavia lettuce
Forms the crisp leafy base of the salad, providing most of its volume and bite.
Celery
Adds a crunchy, fresh texture that contrasts with the tender lettuce.
Watercress
Adds a peppery, fresh note that brightens the mild lettuce.

The step that matters

Drain the lettuce thoroughly before dressing. Any water left on the leaves dilutes the dressing and makes the salad soggy and watery. Draining in a cloth or basket keeps the leaves crisp and lets the dressing cling.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, watercress, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, watercress, pepper. 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.

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