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Salad

Winter Salad

A salad of sliced apples, celery, and lemon, served on lettuce with mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and celery 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 ↓

Winter Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the apples and cut them into slices.

  2. Treat the lemons in the same way.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the apple slices with finely chopped celery.

  2. Cover the mixture with mayonnaise dressing.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the crisp, juicy, slightly sweet body of the salad.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweet apples and help slow their browning.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, slightly savoury texture to the apple mixture.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess that moistens and binds the apple and celery pieces.
Lettuce
Forms a cool, crisp base that holds the salad for serving.

The step that matters

Treat the apple slices promptly. Cut apple flesh oxidises and browns quickly on exposure to air. Acid from lemon slows this reaction, so the slices should be treated and mixed soon after cutting to keep them pale and fresh.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, lemon, celery. 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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