Skip to main content
Salad

Celery and Pineapple Salad

A chilled salad of diced pineapple and chopped celery tossed in cream dressing, served on lettuce and garnished with pecan halves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pineapple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dice the canned pineapple into small pieces.

  2. Finely chop an equal amount of crisp celery.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix the pineapple and celery thoroughly with the cream dressing.

  2. Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves and garnish with pecan halves.

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. Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pineapple + celerytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Pineapple + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned pineapple
Adds sweetness and juiciness that moistens the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch to the salad.
Cream dressing
Coats the fruit and vegetables, adding richness and moisture.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, cream, 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes