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First Class Bleu Cheese Salad

"We used to serve this salad in First Class (when service was still first class). Nearly everyone who had this salad commented on how good it was. This salad is best if served very cold and not made too far in advance of serving. Some very finely chopped onion adds to this salad also, but not on an airplane."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 210 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

2 servings
Prep5 min
Cook8 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. If the almonds are not already toasted, toast them in a dry skillet over medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring often, until golden, then let them cool.

  2. Rinse the romaine leaves, dry them well, and tear them into bite-size pieces.

  3. Press the hard-cooked egg through a sieve or chop it finely.

  4. Divide the lettuce between two chilled salad plates.

  5. Drizzle the blue cheese dressing over the lettuce.

  6. Top each salad with the sieved egg, toasted almonds and crumbled blue cheese, then serve right away.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lettuce + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Lettuce + blue cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Blue cheese + almondtop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Egg + almondtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together12,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Egg + blue cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lettuce, blue cheese):

  1. Walnutbetter flavor fit
  2. Pecansbetter flavor fit
  3. Peasbetter flavor fit
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lettuce, blue cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).