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Prune Salad

A salad of prunes stuffed with marshmallows, coated in dressing and nuts, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Prune Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Cook the prunes until tender.

  2. Cool the cooked prunes.

  3. Cut open one side of each prune.

  4. Remove the stone from each prune.

  5. Insert a marshmallow into each prune.

Coat and serve

  1. Roll the prunes in salad dressing.

  2. Roll the prunes in chopped nuts.

  3. Place a little salad dressing on top of each prune.

  4. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Large prunes
Provide the soft, chewy body and natural sweetness of the salad.
Marshmallows
Add sweetness and a soft, creamy filling inside each prune.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture and tang that help the coating cling to the prunes.
Chopped nuts
Add a crunchy texture that contrasts with the soft prunes.

The step that matters

Cool the cooked prunes before inserting the marshmallows. Warm prunes soften and heat the marshmallow, which can melt and leak out or make the filling runny. Cooling firms the fruit so the marshmallow holds its shape.

“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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