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Salad

Celery and Apple Salad

A salad of diced apples and celery tossed with a sweet and tangy dressing and topped with walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and walnut 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 ↓

Celery and Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the apples and clean the celery, then dice them.

  2. Mix the diced apples and celery together.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, salt, and flour, then add water and vinegar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then cool it before adding the whipped cream.

  3. Pour the dressing over the salad and sprinkle the chopped walnut meats on top.

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 + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

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

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it body.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, creamy texture to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and apples.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the vinegar.
Walnut meats
Adds crunch and nutty flavour on top of the salad.

The step that matters

Cool the cooked dressing before adding the whipped cream. Whipped cream folds in smoothly only when the cooked base is cool; if the base is still hot, the cream can melt, deflate and turn thin and runny.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, sugar, flour, vinegar, cream, walnut, meat):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, sugar, flour, vinegar, cream, walnut, meat. 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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