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Salad

Celery Salad

A salad of finely chopped celery topped with coconut cream, onion, cayenne, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coconut cream

  1. Pour boiling water over the grated coconut and let it cool.

  2. Squeeze the coconut dry and discard it.

  3. Strain the milky water and let it sit until cream rises to the top.

Assemble the salad

  1. Finely chop the tender white parts of the celery and place them in a salad bowl.

  2. Sprinkle the grated onion, cayenne, and salt over the celery.

  3. Skim the cream from the coconut milk and pour it over the celery.

  4. Add the lemon juice and mix gently.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Coconut + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Coconut + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together969 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Coconut
Provides creamy richness and a mild sweetness through its milk and cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the coconut cream.
Grated onion
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and savoury bite to the salad.

The step that matters

Let the cream rise before skimming. Cream separates from the coconut milk only after it has rested undisturbed, so skimming too early or stirring the liquid mixes in thin milk and yields a less rich topping.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coconut, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, pepper, 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.

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