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Salad

Celery and Nut Salad

A fresh salad of chopped celery, walnuts, lettuce, grapes, and French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Celery and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the celery finely.

  2. Combine the chopped celery and walnut kernels in a bowl.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Place the mixture on a bed of lettuce leaves.

  2. Drizzle with French dressing.

  3. Top with halved, seeded white grapes.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + grapetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides a crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft walnuts.
Walnut kernels
Add rich, slightly bitter fat and a firm, crunchy texture to the salad.
French dressing
Adds moisture and sharp acidity that seasons the salad and keeps it from drying out.
White grapes
Add natural sweetness and juiciness that balances the bitterness of the walnuts.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, walnut, pepper, 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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