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Pea Salad

A salad of peas, hard‑boiled eggs, celery, mayonnaise, served on lettuce leaves.

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 ↓

Pea Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the peas as you would for serving.

  2. Once cold, add the chopped celery and diced hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Mix well and cover with mayonnaise.

  4. Serve on a lettuce leaf.

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. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  3. Peas + celerytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Peas + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 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

Peas
Form the bulk of the salad and give it a mild, sweet flavor.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the salad.
Celery
Adds a crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft ingredients.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture that coat the salad and make it creamy.

The step that matters

Cool the peas fully before mixing. Warm peas can thin the mayonnaise and cause it to separate, making the salad watery and greasy. Chilling first keeps the dressing thick and clinging.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, egg, 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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