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Salad

Moulded Celery and Walnut Salad

A salad of celery and walnuts, bound together with mayonnaise and molded using jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Moulded Celery and Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and cut the celery into half-inch pieces.

  2. Cook the walnuts in boiling salted water with the onion, clove, and peppercorns for ten minutes.

  3. Cut the cooked walnuts into small pieces.

Assemble and mould

  1. Mix the celery and walnuts with just enough mayonnaise to hold them together.

  2. Mould the mixture using chicken, tomato, or wine jelly.

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. Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Provide the main texture and nutty flavour, becoming tender after simmering.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh, slightly savoury crunch to the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, binding the celery and walnuts together.
Chicken, tomato, or wine jelly
Sets the mixture into a firm, moulded shape when chilled.

The step that matters

Mix in just enough mayonnaise. Too much mayonnaise makes the salad loose and greasy and can stop the jelly from setting firmly. Adding it gradually keeps the pieces bound but still crisp.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, celery, onion, chicken):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, celery, onion, chicken. 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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