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Salad

Celery and Nut Salad

A chilled salad of celery, pepper, pecans, olives, and mayonnaise served on lettuce or hollowed peppers.

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 ↓

Celery and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Mix the celery, pepper, pecans, and olives in a bowl.

Prepare and serve

  1. If using cress, wash and dry it well.

  2. Arrange the salad on the outside edge of a platter.

  3. Serve cold with mayonnaise dressing on lettuce leaves or in hollowed-out red or green peppers.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pecans
Add crunch and a rich, buttery flavour to the salad.
Olives
Add a salty, briny bite that contrasts with the mild vegetables.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and freshness to the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess, coating the vegetables and nuts.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, pepper, olive, 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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