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Salad

Apple-and-date Salad

A salad of apples and dates dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Apple-and-date Salad

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples and dates

  1. Cut apples into match-like pieces and place the apples in a bowl.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the apples.

  3. Pour boiling water over the dates and separate the dates with a fork.

  4. Let the dates dry in a hot oven.

  5. Once cold, cut each date into 4–5 strips, discarding the stones.

Combine and rest

  1. Sprinkle the dates with salt and olive oil.

  2. Mix the dates with the apples.

  3. Set aside in a cool place for about an hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add lemon juice and more olive oil if needed.

  2. Mix thoroughly.

  3. Serve in a bowl lined with lettuce hearts.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  4. Apple + datestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Apple + olivetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,565 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the crisp, fresh bulk of the salad with a tart bite.
Dates
Add concentrated sweetness and a chewy texture that contrasts with the apple.
Olive oil
Adds fat and moisture, coating the fruit and carrying flavour through the salad.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and helps keep cut apple pieces pale.

The step that matters

Drying the dates in the oven. Dates that stay too moist will turn sticky and clump with the apples. Drying them until they are firm and cold lets them cut cleanly into strips and keeps the salad from becoming wet.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, lemon, olive, 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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