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Salad

Normandy Salad

A salad of French peas, cream cheese, walnuts, mayonnaise, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce 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 ↓

Normandy Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the French peas and place them in a bowl.

  2. Add the cream cheese and English walnuts to the bowl.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the ingredients with mayonnaise dressing until well combined.

  2. Serve the mixture 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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Cream cheese + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

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

  4. Peas + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Peas + cream cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

French peas
Provide the main body and mild sweetness of the salad.
Cream cheese
Adds richness and a creamy texture that binds the salad together.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft ingredients.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and fat, coating the ingredients and helping them hold together.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, walnut, 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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