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Salad

Apple Salad

A salad of chilled apples filled with a mayonnaise and pecan mixture, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Nuts and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 174 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and core each apple.

  2. Chill the apples in the refrigerator until thoroughly cold.

Fill and serve

  1. Mix the mayonnaise dressing with chopped pecan nuts.

  2. Fill each apple with the dressing mixture.

  3. Serve the filled apples 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. Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

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

  3. Apple + nutstop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples
Provide the crisp, firm base and a sharp acidity that balances the rich dressing.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess, coating the filling and giving it a smooth, moist texture.
Pecan nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, buttery flavour against the soft dressing.

The step that matters

Chilling the apples until thoroughly cold. Cold apples stay firm and crisp. Warm apples soften and release juice, which thins the dressing and makes the filled apples watery.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nuts, 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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