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Salad

California Salad

A salad of crab meat, celery, tomatoes, dressed with French dressing and garnished with mayonnaise, served on lettuce.

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 ↓

California Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and marinate

  1. Remove the meat from the crabs and cut it into uniform pieces.

  2. Add the finely chopped celery and quartered tomatoes.

  3. Marinate with French Dressing to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve on lettuce leaves and garnish with Mayonnaise 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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Crab + lettucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Provides the main protein and the bulk of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a mild, fresh crunch against the soft crab.
Tomatoes
Add juiciness and a little acidity that brightens the salad.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, celery, 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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