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Salad

Cheese and Celery Salad

A salad of celery and cheese, topped with pecan nuts and parsley, served on lettuce with French dressing.

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

Cheese and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Separate the celery, clean it thoroughly, and place it on ice until crisp.

  2. Mash the cheese until soft, then add salt, paprika, and ground pecan nuts.

Fill and serve

  1. Dry the celery, fill the hollow part with the cheese mixture, and roll it in finely chopped parsley or celery tops.

  2. Cut into 2-inch pieces and serve on crisp lettuce leaves with French dressing.

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. Lettuce + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Celery + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together614 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + nutstop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

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-tasting shell that holds the filling.
Cheese
Forms a soft, creamy base that holds the filling together and adds richness.
Ground pecan nuts
Add a nutty flavor and a fine, slightly crunchy texture to the filling.
Paprika
Adds mild warmth and color to the cheese filling.
Celery tops
Add a fresh celery aroma and herbal flavor to the outside coating.

The step that matters

Dry the celery before filling. Surface water on the celery thins the cheese mixture and can make the filling slide out or turn the coating soggy. Drying the stalks first keeps the filling thick and in place.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, cheese, 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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