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Apple Salad

A salad of diced apples, celery, nuts, and whipped cream, topped with a boiled egg yolk dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the egg yolks, salt, mustard, and ginger together for the dressing.

  2. Add sugar and vinegar to the dressing, then boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine diced apples, diced celery, chopped nuts, and whipped cream in a bowl just before serving.

  2. Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves in apple shells, removing the apple flesh first.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together988 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Mustard + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,456 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, creamy texture to the salad.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts through the richness of the cream and yolks.

The step that matters

Boil the dressing. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, so the dressing must be heated gently and steadily to thicken smoothly rather than turn grainy.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, celery, cream, egg, mustard, ginger, sugar):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, celery, cream, egg, mustard, ginger, sugar. 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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