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Salad

Celery a LA Remoulade

Celery served with a mustard vinaigrette flavored with shallot, chervil, chives, garlic, salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Chervil and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Celery a LA Remoulade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the celery and place it in a salad boat.

  2. In a bowl, combine the shallot, chervil, chives, garlic, salt, and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the oil, mustard, and vinegar to the mixture.

  2. Stir until the sauce is smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over the celery.

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. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chive + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Oil
Forms the body of the emulsified sauce, giving it a rich, smooth texture.
Mustard
Helps hold the oil and vinegar together as an emulsion and adds sharpness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.
Shallot
Contributes a mild, sharp onion flavour to the sauce.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that carries through the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir until the sauce is smooth. Oil and vinegar separate unless they are whisked or stirred thoroughly with mustard, which acts as an emulsifier. Stopping early leaves a greasy, broken sauce that does not coat the celery evenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, shallot, chervil, chive, garlic, pepper, mustard):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, shallot, chervil, chive, garlic, pepper, mustard. 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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