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Salad

Pear, Cheese, and Walnut Salad

A salad of canned pears, cheese, celery, cream, lettuce, walnuts, and dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pear, Cheese, and Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the canned pears and season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and paprika.

  2. Mix equal parts cheese, celery, and cream, and season to taste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place a pear on a bed of lettuce.

  2. Add three cheese balls to each plate.

  3. Top with mayonnaise or your favorite salad dressing.

  4. For walnuts, ask your grocer for 'Diamond Walnuts' and crack them at home.

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. Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  5. Pear + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned pears
Provide the sweet, soft fruit that forms the base of the salad.
Cheese
Adds rich, savory creaminess that balances the sweetness of the pears.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the cheese mixture, making it softer and spreadable.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasted, nutty flavor against the soft pears and cheese.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cheese, celery, cream, lettuce, walnut):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cheese, celery, cream, lettuce, walnut. 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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