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Celery Relish

A chilled celery relish with anchovy and egg mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Celery Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut celery into 2‑inch pieces.

  2. Soak in ice water with lemon rind or vinegar until crisp.

  3. Remove fillets from anchovies and chop finely.

Make the filling

  1. Mix anchovies with sifted yolks and chopped whites of hard‑boiled eggs.

  2. Add enough mayonnaise to hold mixture together.

Serve

  1. Fill celery pieces with the mixture and serve as an appetizer.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Celery + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Celery hearts
Provides the crisp, watery stalk that holds the filling.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth to the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Supply rich, creamy body to the filling when mashed with mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise
Binds the egg and anchovy mixture together and adds fat for smoothness.

The step that matters

Soak celery in ice water until crisp. Cold water firms the cell walls of the celery, so the stalks stay crunchy and hold the filling. Skipping or shortening the soak leaves limp stalks that bend under the filling.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg. 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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