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Salad

Cheese and Olive Salad

A salad of Neufchatel and Young America cheeses mixed with olives, seasoned, moistened with cream, served on lettuce with French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cheese and Olive Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese filling

  1. Mix the Neufchatel cheeses, Young America cheese, and chopped olives in a bowl.

  2. Season with salt and cayenne, then moisten with cream.

  3. Press the mixture and cut it into squares.

Serve

  1. Serve on crisp lettuce leaves and drizzle with French dressing.

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. Cheese + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,802 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together614 recipes

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

  5. Olive + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,206 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

Neufchatel cheeses
Provides the soft, creamy base that holds the salad together.
Young america cheese
Adds body and a firmer cheese flavour to the filling.
Olives
Contribute salty, briny flavour and small pieces of texture.
Cream
Adds moisture so the cheese mixture becomes soft and spreadable.

The step that matters

Press the mixture and cut it into squares. Pressing packs the soft cheese so it holds its shape when cut. If the mixture is too wet from the cream, it may slump, so add cream gradually.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, olive, cream. 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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