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Salad

Celery Salad

A celery salad mixed with a paste of hard‑boiled egg, raw egg, olive oil, mustard, vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut the celery into half-inch pieces.

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the hard-boiled egg into a smooth paste.

  2. Add the salt, sugar, pepper, mustard, and olive oil to the egg paste.

  3. Beat the raw egg until frothy and stir it in.

  4. Add the vinegar last and mix well with the celery.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately to prevent the vinegar from spoiling 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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Celery
Provides the crisp, fresh bulk of the salad.
Raw egg
Beaten until frothy, it adds richness and body to the dressing.
Hard-boiled egg
Mashed into a smooth paste that gives the dressing its base.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the salad and balances the richness.
Olive oil
Adds fat that smooths the dressing and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. Vinegar keeps acting on the celery once it is mixed in, so the vegetable softens and loses crispness over time. Serving soon after mixing keeps the texture crisp.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, sugar, pepper, vinegar, 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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