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Salad

Nut and Celery Salad

A salad of pecans, almonds, walnuts, and celery, marinated in oil and served with French dressing and garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Nut and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix equal parts of pecans, almonds, English walnuts, and celery.

  2. Marinate the mixture in oil.

Serve

  1. Serve with French dressing, garnished with curly celery and lettuce.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

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

  3. Almond + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Pecans + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Pecans
Add crunch and a rich, buttery flavor to the salad.
Almonds
Add crisp texture and a mild, sweet nuttiness.
English walnuts
Add chewy texture and a slightly bitter, earthy flavor.
Celery
Adds crisp, fresh crunch and a clean, vegetal note.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, walnut, celery, 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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