Skip to main content
Salad

Grape and Nut Salad

A salad of halved grapes and nuts dressed with a mustard‑vinegar sauce and folded with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Grape and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad base

  1. Combine the halved grapes and nut meats in a 2:1 ratio in a bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the egg yolks and add vinegar in a double boiler.

  2. Mix in sugar, mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add butter and cook until thick, stirring constantly.

  4. Set the dish in cool water and stir for a few more minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Fold in the whipped cream and serve on 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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Grape + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Grape + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set during gentle cooking, giving it a creamy body.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a soft, airy texture when folded into the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness to the cooked dressing.
White grapes
Provide juicy sweetness and a fresh texture to the salad.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg yolk dressing in the double boiler. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they can scramble into lumps. Constant stirring over moderate heat keeps the custard smooth, and cooling it promptly stops further setting.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, butter):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, butter. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes