Name: Celery Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup crisp, blanched celery stalks, cut into half-inch pieces; 1 tablespoon olive oil; a dash of cayenne pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 teaspoon cider vinegar; lettuce leaves (for serving); watercress or parsley (for garnish); Graham wafers (for serving); cream cheese (for serving)

Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Celery Salad

Ingredients

1 cup crisp, blanched celery stalks, cut into half-inch pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil
a dash of cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
lettuce leaves (for serving)
watercress or parsley (for garnish)
Graham wafers (for serving)
cream cheese (for serving)

Directions

Prepare

Remove tough strings from the celery pieces.

Make the dressing and dress the celery

In a bowl, mix olive oil, cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and cider vinegar to make the dressing.
Toss the celery in the dressing until well coated.

Serve

Serve the celery on a bed of lettuce or garnished with watercress or parsley.
Accompany with Graham wafers and your choice of cream cheese.

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.

Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery: Provides the crisp, fresh-textured body of the salad.
Olive oil: Carries the dressing and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the celery.
Cider vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the oil.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, pepper, cider, vinegar, lettuce, watercress, cream cheese):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Dillfits better
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, pepper, cider, vinegar, lettuce, watercress, cream 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.