Skip to main content
Salad

Combination Salad

A lettuce salad with celery, tomato, green pepper, pimento cheese, toasted crackers, dressed with oil, vinegar, paprika, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and celery 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 ↓

Combination Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Select a nice head of lettuce; cut off the stalk and pull apart.

  2. Wash and drain or wipe dry with a soft cloth; toss lightly on salad plates.

  3. Cut the celery into very fine slices; form a ring of shredded celery on the lettuce.

  4. Cut the tomato and green pepper into slices; place a slice of tomato and a ring of green pepper on each salad.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, mix paprika and salt in a bowl, add part of the oil and stir well.

  2. Add vinegar and oil alternately until all are used.

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. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the crisp green base that holds the other salad components.
Wesson oil
Carries the dressing and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Tomato
Adds juiciness and a mild acidic sweetness to the salad.

The step that matters

Adding vinegar and oil alternately. Oil and vinegar do not mix on their own, so adding them in small alternating amounts while stirring helps form a more cohesive dressing that coats the leaves evenly instead of separating into layers.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, tomato, pepper, vinegar, cheese):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, tomato, pepper, vinegar, cheese. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes