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Salad

Celery Dressed As Slaw

Celery tossed with a dressing of vinegar, sweet oil, mustard, egg yolks, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Celery Dressed As Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Cut the celery into pieces about ¼ inch long.

  2. In a bowl, mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Add vinegar, sweet oil, mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper to the mashed yolks and mix well.

Dress and serve

  1. Keep the celery in cold water to make it crisp until 15 minutes before serving.

  2. Drain the celery and pour the dressing over it before serving.

  3. Pour the dressing over the celery and stir to combine.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the crisp, fresh texture that defines the slaw.
Egg yolks
Mashed into the dressing, they add richness and body that coats the celery.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Sweet oil
Adds fat and smoothness, carrying flavour through the dressing.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.

The step that matters

Keep the celery in cold water until serving. Soaking in cold water firms the cell walls, keeping the celery crisp. Draining it well before dressing matters, since surface water thins the dressing and makes the slaw soggy.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper. 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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