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Salad

Celery and Pimento Salad

A chilled salad of celery and pimentos set in a gelatinous lemon‑sugar base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Celery and Pimento Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup of water until dissolved.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water, ½ cup lemon juice, and ½ cup sugar.

  3. Let the mixture cool until it begins to set.

  4. Stir in ⅓ can of pimentos and 1½ cups of finely chopped celery.

  5. Pour into individual molds and refrigerate until firm.

Serve

  1. Serve 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. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + lettucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable gel that holds its shape in molds.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the gel and offsets the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, vegetal bite to the set gel.
Pimentos
Adds sweet, mild flavour and colour to the salad.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until it begins to set. If the gel is still very hot or fully set, the celery and pimentos will sink unevenly or fail to distribute. Cooling only until syrupy lets the pieces stay suspended as it firms.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, celery. 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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