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Salad

Dressed Celery

A chilled celery salad seasoned with salt, pepper, and cream of mustard dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Dressed Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Trim and wash the celery in cold water.

  2. Let it chill on ice until ready to use.

  3. Dry it on a napkin and cut it into thin sticks, 1.5 inches long.

Dress and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and cream of mustard dressing.

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

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

  4. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Celery
Provides the crisp, fresh, watery body that gives the dish its crunch.
Cream of mustard dressing
Adds fat and sharp mustard flavour that coats the celery and balances its mildness.

The step that matters

Dry the celery well before seasoning. Water left on the celery thins the dressing and dilutes its flavour, so the sticks should be patted dry on a napkin before the dressing and seasoning go on.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, pepper, cream. 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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