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Salad

Apple Salad

A salad of finely chopped apple and celery dressed with a mustard, egg yolk, and olive oil vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Chop the apple and celery finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the apple, celery, salt, mustard, and pepper. Stir well and cover tightly.

  3. Refrigerate for 25 minutes.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, mix the egg yolk, salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper in a small bowl.

  2. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring continuously.

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

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

  3. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  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

Apple
Adds crisp texture and a mild sweetness to the salad.
Celery
Provides crisp, crunchy texture and moisture to the salad.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies with the olive oil to thicken the dressing.
Olive oil
Adds fat and body to the dressing, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil to the egg yolk. Oil must be added slowly, drop by drop, while stirring so the egg yolk can emulsify it. Adding it too fast makes the dressing separate and stay thin instead of thick and creamy.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, mustard, pepper, egg, sugar, olive):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, mustard, pepper, egg, sugar, olive. 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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