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Salad

Cherries and Cheese Salad

A salad of chilled cherries filled with Neufchâtel cheese mixture, served on lettuce with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,655 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cherries and Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stones from the canned cherries and chill them thoroughly.

  2. Mix the Neufchâtel cheese, chopped pecans, cream, salt, and paprika in a bowl.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the cavities of the cherries with the cheese mixture.

  2. Serve the filled cherries on a bed of lettuce and drizzle with mayonnaise.

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. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together564 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together579 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together614 recipes

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

  5. Meat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,248 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Neufchâtel cheese
Provides a soft, creamy filling that holds its shape inside the cherries.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, making the cheese filling smoother and easier to spread.
Pecans
Add a crunchy texture and nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft filling.
Canned cherries
Supply the sweet-tart fruit and a cavity to hold the filling.

The step that matters

Chilling the cherries thoroughly. Cold cherries stay firm and hold their shape when filled, while warm fruit softens and can leak juice into the cheese filling.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, meat, 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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