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Salad

Chesse and Celery Salad

A chilled salad of cream cheese, heavy cream, celery, mayonnaise, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Chesse and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lightly grease a cone-shaped mold with olive oil.

Assemble the salad

  1. Mix cream cheese with heavy cream to form a paste.

  2. Line the mold with the cream cheese mixture.

  3. Fill the center with finely chopped celery mixed with mayonnaise.

  4. Carefully turn out the salad onto a lettuce leaf.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  5. Cream cheese + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese
Forms the smooth, firm paste that lines the mold and holds the shape.
Heavy cream
Loosens the cream cheese into a spreadable paste with a softer, richer texture.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh flavor to the filling.
Mayonnaise
Binds the chopped celery into a creamy filling and adds fat for richness.

The step that matters

Carefully turn out the salad onto a lettuce leaf. The cream cheese shell is soft and can crack or tear when unmolded. Chilling it until firm before turning it out helps it keep its shape.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream cheese, cream, olive, lettuce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, cream, olive, 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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