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Salad

Apple and Celery Salad

A salad of chopped apples, celery, and walnuts dressed with a mustard, sugar, and vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Apple and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix salt, mustard, sugar, flour, egg, milk, melted butter, and vinegar until smooth.

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it thickens, then let it cool.

Assemble the salad

  1. Chop the celery, apples, and walnuts finely.

  2. Combine the chopped ingredients with the cooled dressing.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Thickens the cooked dressing as it sets with heat.
Flour
Helps thicken the dressing and give it body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar's sharpness.
Apples
Add crisp texture and fresh sweetness to the salad.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing until it thickens. The egg and flour must be cooked gently over medium heat until the mixture thickens. Heating too fast can scramble the egg, leaving lumps, while undercooking leaves the dressing thin.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, sugar, flour, egg, milk, butter, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, sugar, flour, egg, milk, butter, vinegar. 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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