Skip to main content
Main

Nut Salad

A salad of walnuts and celery dressed with a mayonnaise-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Nut Salad

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 ↓

Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. Combine chopped walnuts and celery in a bowl.

  2. For the mayonnaise, whisk together egg yolk, salt, sugar, mustard, and cayenne pepper, then slowly add olive oil drop by drop while stirring continuously.

  3. Moisten with lemon juice or vinegar to taste.

Make the salad dressing

  1. For the salad dressing, hard boil the eggs, then separate the yolks.

  2. Mash yolks with melted butter, salt, dry mustard, sugar, and pepper.

  3. Gradually stir in milk or cream and enough vinegar to thicken.

  4. Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring until smooth.

  5. If using milk only, dissolve corn-starch in it to thicken.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Garnish the salad with the whites of the hard-boiled eggs.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 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

Walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavour to the salad.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil into the mayonnaise, giving it a thick, smooth body.
Olive oil
Provides fat and richness, forming the body of the mayonnaise.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and creaminess, thickening the dressing when heated.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk-based dressing when heated.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. Oil must be added drop by drop while whisking, so it emulsifies into the yolk. Adding it too fast breaks the mixture, which then will not thicken into mayonnaise.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipes