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Salad

Celery and Nut Salad

A cold salad of diced celery, pecans, olives, and pepper tossed with mayonnaise and served on lettuce or pepper shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Celery and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the celery, pecans, olives, and chopped pepper in a bowl.

  2. Serve cold on lettuce leaves or in hollowed-out red or green peppers.

  3. If using cress, wash and dry it well before arranging it on the platter's edge.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  3. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh, watery crunch to the salad.
Pecans
Provide rich flavor and a firm, crunchy texture.
Olives
Add a briny, salty bite that contrasts with the milder ingredients.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess that coats the pieces and holds the salad together.
Pepper
Adds mild sweetness and crunch to the mix.

The step that matters

Drying the cress. Excess water makes cress limp and can make the platter soggy, so drying it well keeps the leaves crisp when served.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, olive, pepper, lettuce. 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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