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Salad

Celery Salad

A salad of chopped celery and green peppers, optionally with apple, served with lettuce or as tomato stuffing and dressed to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cleaned celery coarsely.

  2. Chop an equal quantity of green peppers.

  3. Mix the celery and green peppers well.

Dress and serve

  1. Dress with your preferred dressing.

  2. Serve with lettuce or use as stuffing for tomatoes.

  3. Serve in half peppers for a milder flavor.

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

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

  4. Celery + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Lettuce + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides crisp texture and fresh, slightly savory crunch to the salad.
Green peppers
Adds crisp texture and a sharp, fresh bite that is milder when served in halves.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, pepper, lettuce):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, 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.

More celery salad recipes

Apple 14Chicken 11Walnut 11Stuffed 6Pineapple 4Tomato 4 See all 80 →

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