Name: Salad of Celery, Cabbage, and Beets
Ingredients: Equal quantities of celery; Equal quantities of cold slaw; Pickled beets, finely chopped; Remoulade sauce or Sydney Smith's salad dressing

Why it works: Celery and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,360 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Salad of Celery, Cabbage, and Beets

Ingredients

Equal quantities of celery
Equal quantities of cold slaw
Pickled beets, finely chopped
Remoulade sauce or Sydney Smith's salad dressing

Directions

Prepare

Prepare equal quantities of celery and cold slaw.
Finely chop the pickled beets and mix with the celery and cold slaw.
Refrigerate the mixture in the ice box.

Dress and serve

Add remoulade sauce or Sydney Smith's salad dressing and mix well.
Let stand for no more than 10 minutes before serving.
Serve very cold.

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.

Celery + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,360 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery: Provides crisp, crunchy texture and fresh bulk to the salad.
Cold slaw: Adds crunchy cabbage body and bulk to the salad.
Pickled beets: Add sweet-sour acidity and a deep colour to the salad.
Remoulade sauce: Adds fat and creaminess, binding the vegetables with a tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Let stand for no more than 10 minutes before serving. Vegetables release water and soften when dressed, so a short rest keeps the celery and cabbage crisp. Standing too long makes the salad watery and limp.

“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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Cold Slaw160 recipes

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Salad of Celery, Cabbage, and Beets