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Salad

Celery Salad

A salad of sliced celery dressed with a creamy vinaigrette of egg yolk, olive oil, milk, vinegar, mustard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard 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 ↓

Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash the celery in cold water and drain on a clean cloth.

  2. Split the celery stalks lengthwise into four or five pieces.

  3. Cut the split stalks into ½-inch lengths.

  4. Place the celery pieces in a salad dish.

Make the dressing

  1. In a small skillet, heat the vinegar, mustard, and salt until hot but not boiling.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and olive oil together, then stir in the milk.

  3. Combine the milk mixture with the hot vinegar mixture.

  4. Stir the combined mixture until it thickens to the consistency of cream without boiling.

  5. Let the dressing cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the cooled dressing with the celery.

  2. Garnish the top with the yellow leaves of the celery.

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 + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set gently with heat, giving it a creamy body.
Olive oil
Adds fat that makes the dressing smooth and rich in mouthfeel.
Rich sweet milk
Dilutes the dressing and adds creaminess, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tang and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Stir the dressing without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but boiling can scramble them into lumps. Stirring over heat only until the mixture reaches cream consistency keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, milk, cider, vinegar, mustard):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, milk, cider, vinegar, mustard. 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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