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Salad

Cream Cheese Salad

A chilled salad of cream cheese, gherkin, olives, mayonnaise, lettuce, and nasturtium blossoms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cream Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, mix the soft cream cheese with the chopped gherkin and olives.

  2. Add enough mayonnaise dressing to shape the mixture.

  3. Chill thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Serve on a bed of lettuce and surround with nasturtium blossoms.

  2. Cut into slices for 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.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  3. Cream cheese + lettucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Soft cream cheese
Forms the creamy base that holds the mixture together and gives it a rich texture.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture so the mixture can be shaped and stays soft and spreadable.
Gherkin
Adds tangy acidity and a crisp bite that contrasts with the creamy base.
Olives
Contributes salty, briny flavour that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Chill thoroughly. Cream cheese and mayonnaise firm up as they cool, so chilling lets the mixture set enough to hold its shape when sliced. Cutting it before it is cold can cause it to smear or crumble.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream cheese, olive):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, olive. 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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