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Salad

Cabbage and Celery Salad

A salad of finely shredded cabbage and celery dressed with cream and garnished with celery and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cabbage and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the center from the cabbage and cut it very fine with a sharp knife.

  2. Soak the cabbage in ice water for one hour, then drain.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the drained cabbage with the chopped celery.

  2. Add cream dressing and refill the cabbage.

  3. Arrange on a folded napkin and garnish with celery and parsley plumes.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 recipes

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

  4. Plum + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Celery + plumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together231 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

White cabbage
Forms the crisp, shredded base of the salad, giving bulk and crunch.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, mildly savory flavor to the salad.
Cream dressing
Coats the vegetables, adding richness and moisture to the salad.

The step that matters

Soaking the cabbage in ice water. Soaking finely cut cabbage in ice water firms its cell structure, keeping it crisp rather than limp once dressed. Draining it well matters too, since leftover water thins the cream dressing and dilutes its flavor.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, celery, cream, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, cream, parsley. 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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