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Salad

Nut and Celery Salad

A salad of Brazil nuts and shredded celery dressed with mayonnaise and garnished with tomato or beetroot slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Nut and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crack the Brazil nuts and cut the kernels into three or four pieces.

  2. Wash and shred an equal quantity of celery.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the nuts and celery together and dress with mayonnaise sauce.

  2. Pile the mixture in the center of a salad bowl and garnish with sliced tomato or beetroot.

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 + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Brazil nut + celerytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Brazil nut + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Celery + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,360 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Brazil nuts
Provide crunchy texture and a rich, fatty bite that contrasts with the crisp celery.
Celery
Adds crisp, watery crunch and fresh flavour that lightens the richness of the nuts.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and creaminess, binding the nuts and celery and carrying the dressing's flavour.

Swap the brazil nut

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Brazil nutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, sauce, tomato. 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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