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Salad

Veal Salad

A salad of diced veal and celery mixed with a thickened mustard, sugar, and vinegar dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Veal Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine salt, mustard, sugar, and raw eggs in a bowl and beat thoroughly.

  2. Add vinegar and mix well.

  3. Place the bowl in a dish of boiling water and stir until the mixture thickens.

Assemble the salad

  1. Dice the veal and celery.

  2. Combine the diced veal and celery with the thickened mixture.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vinegar + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,627 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw eggs
Thicken the dressing into a creamy sauce as they cook gently in the hot water.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of the eggs.
Veal
Provides the main meat body of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture to the salad.

The step that matters

Stirring the dressing over boiling water. Egg proteins set gradually when heated. If the mixture gets too hot or is not stirred constantly, the eggs can scramble, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, thickened dressing. Gentle, constant stirring keeps it silky.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, sugar, egg, butter, vinegar, veal):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, sugar, egg, butter, vinegar, veal. 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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