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Salad

Celery and Radish Salad

A salad of sliced celery and radishes dressed with French dressing and garnished with lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Radish and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Celery and Radish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut celery into 4‑inch lengths and slice each piece into 3 or 4 strips to curl.

  2. Soak the celery in cold water until ready to serve.

  3. Slice the radishes very thin without peeling.

Assemble and serve

  1. Alternate layers of celery and radish in a shallow dish.

  2. Pour French dressing over the salad.

  3. Garnish with lettuce leaves.

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. Radish + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Celery + radishtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the crisp texture, and soaking in cold water helps the strips curl and stay crunchy.
Radishes
Add a sharp, peppery bite and crisp texture that contrasts with the celery.
French dressing
Adds moisture and acidity that flavours the vegetables as the salad rests.

The step that matters

Soaking the celery in cold water. Cold water makes the cut celery firm and encourages the strips to curl. Soaking until just before serving keeps it crisp, because celery left out of water or dressed too early softens and goes limp.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (radish, lettuce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against radish, lettuce. 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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