Skip to main content

Endive Salad with Blue Cheese, Cranberries and Candied Walnuts

This colorful salad makes a wonderful starter during the winter holidays. To save time, prepare the blue cheese dressing up to 2 days in advance; cover and refrigerate until ready to use. You can also make the candied walnuts several days ahead of time. Let them cool completely, then store in an airtight container at room temperature.

Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Walnut and endive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 39 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By williamssonoma. 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. Walnut + endivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together39 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Chive + endivetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together61 recipes

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

  4. Butter + blue cheesetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Buttermilk + blue cheesetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together42 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 chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, walnut, buttermilk, lemon, blue cheese, pepper):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatoabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Lettuceabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, walnut, buttermilk, lemon, blue cheese, pepper. 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).