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Salad

Cabbage Walnut Salad

A salad of chopped cabbage and celery dressed with butter, salt, pepper, and walnut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cabbage Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage and celery.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Cover with salad dressing.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, mix in the chopped walnuts.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the crisp, bulky body of the salad.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, slightly savoury bite.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that softens the sharpness of the raw vegetables.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty, toasty flavour against the soft dressed vegetables.
Salad dressing
Moistens the vegetables and carries most of the seasoning.

The step that matters

Mix in the walnuts just before serving. Walnuts absorb moisture and lose their crunch when left sitting in dressing. Adding them at the last moment keeps them crisp and their flavour distinct.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, celery, pepper, butter):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Black-eyed peafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, pepper, butter. 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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