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Salad

Celery and Apple Salad

A salad of finely diced celery and apples dressed with vinegar, thick cream, salt, pepper, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Celery and Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dice the celery and apples very fine.

  2. Season with salt and white pepper.

  3. Dress with a mixture of vinegar and double the amount of thick cream.

  4. Add sugar if preferred.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Celery + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Apple + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,884 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Celery + white peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together853 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the crisp, crunchy texture that gives the salad its body.
Apples
Add crisp texture and natural sweetness that balances the tart dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the cream.
Thick cream
Adds fat and richness, coating the diced vegetables and fruit in a smooth dressing.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, apple, vinegar, cream, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, apple, vinegar, cream, sugar. 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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