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Salad

Cantaloupe Salad

A salad of cubed cantaloupe seasoned with salt, paprika, and cinnamon, topped with cream cheese, mayonnaise, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 89 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Cantaloupe Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meaty interior of the cantaloupe into cubes.

  2. Dust the cubes lightly with coarse sea salt, paprika, and cinnamon.

  3. Place the cantaloupe in a jar and refrigerate for several hours.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, press cream cheese through a ricer over the cantaloupe on a bed of lettuce.

  2. Serve with oil mayonnaise and whipped cream.

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. Cinnamon + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Cream cheese + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Cream cheese + lettucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Cinnamon + cream cheesetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together704 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Lettuce + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,121 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

Cantaloupe
Provides the sweet, juicy fruit that forms the body of the salad.
Cream cheese
Adds richness and a creamy, fat-based texture when pressed over the cold fruit.
Oil mayonnaise
Adds fat and a creamy, savoury note alongside the fruit.
Whipped cream
Adds airy richness and fat to the serving.

The step that matters

Refrigerating the cantaloupe for several hours. Chilling firms the fruit and mellows its flavour while the seasonings soak in. Letting it sit too briefly leaves the cubes bland and watery, while the cold also keeps the cream cheese firm when it is pressed on top.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, lettuce, 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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