Skip to main content
Salad

Nut and Celery Salad

A salad of shredded cabbage, celery, and peanuts dressed with cream and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Nut and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Remove the center from a well-shaped cabbage and trim the shell to stand evenly on a serving dish.

  2. Soak the shredded cabbage in cold water until crisp.

  3. Soak the shredded celery in water with a slice of lemon until crisp.

  4. Drain the cabbage and celery, then dry them on a cloth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine the cabbage, celery, and peanut meats in a bowl.

  2. Moisten with cream dressing and serve in the cabbage bowl.

  3. Garnish with celery plumes.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Cabbage + peanuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Celery + peanuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides crisp, crunchy texture and fresh flavor to the salad.
Peanut meats
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavor to the salad.
Cabbage center
Adds crisp body and forms the edible serving bowl.
Cream dressing
Adds moisture and richness that coats the vegetables and peanuts.

The step that matters

Drying the shredded vegetables. Soaking makes cabbage and celery crisp, but leftover surface water would dilute the cream dressing and make it runny. Drying them on a cloth before combining keeps the dressing thick and clinging.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, peanut, cream, lemon. 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

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes