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Apple Salad

Apple salad with celery, dressed in a thickened egg yolk vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light, then mix in the sugar, mustard, and salt.

  2. Combine with vinegar and melted butter, then cook until thick.

Assemble the salad

  1. Cut the apples and celery into small pieces.

  2. Once cool, take out the required amount for the salad and thin with cream or milk.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing and add richness as they set when cooked.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, smoothing the dressing's texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the apples and sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing to balance the vinegar's sharpness.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing until thick. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Cook gently and stir constantly until the dressing coats a spoon.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, egg, sugar, mustard, vinegar, butter, cream):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, egg, sugar, mustard, vinegar, butter, cream. 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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