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Salad

Moulded Celery and Walnut Salad

A salad of celery and walnuts mixed with mayonnaise, cooked with onion, clove, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Moulded Celery and Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Cook the walnuts in boiling salted water with the onion, clove, and peppercorns for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and drain the walnuts.

  3. Cut the walnuts into small pieces.

Assemble

  1. Mix the celery and walnuts with just enough mayonnaise to hold them together.

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

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

  2. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Adds crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts the creamy dressing.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh moisture to the salad.
Mayonnaise
Its oil and egg emulsion coats and binds the pieces, adding richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Mixing in the mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is an emulsion of oil, egg and water; too much makes the salad greasy and loose, while too little leaves the walnuts and celery dry and unbound. Adding just enough coats the pieces and holds them together.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, celery, clove. 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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