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Salad

Combination Salad

A salad of diced tomatoes, celery, onion, bell pepper, tossed with French dressing and served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Combination Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut tomatoes into large dice.

  2. Slice onion thinly.

  3. Dice celery and peppers, removing seeds.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour French dressing over all ingredients.

  2. Mix well and let stand for several hours.

  3. Serve on a bed of lettuce leaves.

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. Tomato + celerytop 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. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Add juice and a fresh, slightly acidic flavor to the salad.
Celery
Adds a crisp, crunchy texture that holds up after dressing.
Bermuda onion
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during standing.
Green bell peppers
Provide crunch and a mildly grassy, fresh flavor.
French dressing
Adds moisture and seasoning, soaking into the vegetables as they stand.

The step that matters

Letting the salad stand. Dressing and salt draw moisture out of the vegetables and let flavors penetrate them. Standing for several hours lets the mixture blend, but the vegetables can turn limp if left much longer.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, 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.

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