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Salad

Date and Apple Salad

A salad of dates and apples dressed with lemon juice, salt, optional ginger or paprika, and olive oil, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Date and Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dates

  1. Pour boiling water over the dates and separate them with a fork.

  2. Lift the dates to an agate plate and place in the oven to dry, turning if necessary.

  3. Once cold, cut each date into four or five lengthwise strips.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pare, quarter, and dice the apples to match the volume of the dates.

  2. Squeeze the lemon juice over the diced apples and mix with the date pieces.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and ginger or paprika, if using, and mix again.

  4. Add olive oil and mix thoroughly.

  5. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  5. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Provide the main body and sweetness of the salad after drying and cutting.
Apples
Add moisture and crisp texture that contrasts with the chewy dates.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the dates and keeps apple pieces from browning.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the salad a smooth, rich coating.

The step that matters

Drying the dates in the oven. Dates soaked in boiling water hold extra moisture, and drying them before cutting keeps the salad from becoming soggy once the apples and lemon juice are mixed in.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dates, apple, lemon, olive, lettuce):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, apple, lemon, olive, lettuce. 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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