Skip to main content
Salad

Apple and Celery Salad

A salad of chopped apples, celery, and walnuts dressed with a mustard, sugar, and vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Apple and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix salt, mustard, sugar, flour, egg, milk, melted butter, and vinegar in a bowl until smooth.

  2. Cook the mixture over low heat until it thickens, then let it cool.

Assemble the salad

  1. Chop celery, apples, and walnuts finely.

  2. Combine the chopped ingredients with the 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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and gives it body.
Flour
Helps the dressing thicken into a smooth, stable custard.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sweet and creamy dressing.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavour to the salad.
Apples
Add crisp texture and natural sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing over low heat. The egg proteins and starch in the flour thicken the dressing as it heats. Too much heat can scramble the egg and leave lumps, so keep the heat low and stir steadily until it thickens.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, sugar, flour, egg, milk, butter, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, sugar, flour, egg, milk, butter, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes