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Salad

Boiled Salad

A salad of boiled celery, French beans, lettuce, and endive, dressed with sauce No. 506, 507, or 508.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Boiled Salad

Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Boiled Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the celery until tender, then cut it into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Boil the French beans until tender.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the celery and beans in a salad bowl.

  2. Pour over your choice of sauce No. 506, 507, or 508.

  3. Garnish with finely chopped, blanched lettuce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Beans + endivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Celery + endivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together160 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the main body of the salad, becoming tender when boiled.
French beans
Add tender texture and bulk alongside the celery.

The step that matters

Boiling the celery until tender. Celery stalks are fibrous, so they must be cooked long enough to soften fully; undercooked pieces stay stringy and crunchy in a salad.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, lettuce, endive. 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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