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Salad

Celery and Apple Salad

A salad of lettuce, celery, tart apples, and dressing, optionally topped with pecans or walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and celery 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 ↓

Celery and Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and crisp the lettuce.

  2. Break the celery into stalks, wash, and use the white parts. Cut into pieces about ½ inch long.

  3. Pare the tart apples and cut into dice.

  4. Mix the celery and apples together.

  5. If desired, add pecans or walnuts to the celery and apples.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the lettuce on individual plates and fill with the celery and apple mixture.

  2. Top with a spoonful of salad 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. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Lettuce + pecanstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

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

  3. Celery + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Lettuce + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Apple + pecanstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides crisp, crunchy texture to the salad.
Tart apples
Add crisp texture and a tart, fresh flavor that balances the dressing.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture and flavor that coats the celery and apples.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp base that holds the salad mixture.

Swap the pecans

The recipe marks pecans as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, celery, apple):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, celery, apple. 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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