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Salad

Nut Salad

A salad of walnuts, celery, and a creamy sweet dressing made with egg yolks, sugar, vinegar, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Nut Salad

Why it works: Walnut and celery 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 ↓

Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the celery finely and mix with a pinch of salt and the walnuts.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, sugar, butter, and vinegar. Cook until thick, stirring constantly.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then fold in the cream.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the cream mixture with the nuts and celery before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 cook and set, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds richness and a light, smooth texture to the cooled dressing.
Walnuts
Provide the crunchy texture and nutty flavor that contrast with the soft dressing.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh, vegetal crunch to the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar in the dressing.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook the egg yolk mixture until thick. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but overheating can make them curdle and turn grainy. Stirring constantly spreads heat evenly and prevents lumps, so the dressing stays smooth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, egg, sugar, vinegar, butter, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, egg, sugar, vinegar, butter, cream. 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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