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Salad

Celery Salad with Remoulade Sauce

A celery salad dressed with a remoulade sauce made from egg yolks, mustard, sugar, vinegar, oil, onion, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Celery Salad with Remoulade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Trim and wash the celery, then cut it into 1-inch lengths.

  2. Peel and grate the onion.

Make the remoulade sauce

  1. Rub the egg yolks through a sieve into a bowl.

  2. Add mustard, sugar, oil, grated onion, vinegar, salt, and cayenne to the yolks. Mix all ingredients smoothly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the remoulade sauce over the celery and mix well just before serving.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the crisp, fresh texture that makes up the body of the salad.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and mustard to give the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Oil
Adds richness and fat, helping form the emulsified sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the sweetness and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharp vinegar and mustard flavours.
Dry mustard
Adds pungency and helps stabilise the emulsion of the sauce.

The step that matters

Mix the remoulade just before serving. Celery releases water and softens over time, so dressing it too early makes the salad limp and watery. Mixing just before serving keeps the celery crisp.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, egg, mustard, sugar, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, egg, mustard, sugar, vinegar, pepper. 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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