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Salad

Apple and Celery Salad

A salad of diced apples and sliced celery tossed with a mustard‑based dressing and topped with walnuts, green pepper, and muscat grapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a double boiler, combine sugar, lemon juice, coarse sea salt, black pepper, dry mustard, butter, flour, and egg. Cook until thickened.

  2. Thin the dressing with sour cream or sweet milk.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a large bowl, mix the apples and celery.

  2. Pour the dressing over the mixture.

  3. Toss gently.

  4. Top the salad with broken walnut meats, shredded green pepper, and skinned muscat grapes.

  5. Serve the salad on lettuce leaves.

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. Lemon + peppertop 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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the dressing a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Helps thicken the dressing so it coats the apples and celery.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sugar and keeps apple cubes from browning.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the lemon juice and mustard.
Apples
Provide crisp texture and juicy body to the salad.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing until thickened. The egg and flour must be cooked gently in the double boiler; the egg proteins set and thicken the dressing, and high heat or direct contact can curdle it into lumps.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, sugar, lemon, pepper, mustard, butter, flour. 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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