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Salad

English Walnut Salad

A salad of celery, walnuts, and apples dressed with olive oil and lemon juice, served with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

English Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak walnuts in lemon juice for 30 minutes and drain.

  2. Mix soaked walnuts with celery and apples.

Dress and chill

  1. Pour olive oil over the mixture and let it stand in the refrigerator for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve on a lettuce leaf with 1 teaspoon of mayonnaise.

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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Olive + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  5. Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Provide the main crunchy texture and nutty flavour of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp crunch and fresh, mild body to the salad.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the ingredients and softening the flavours.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and mellows the walnuts.
Mayonnaise
Adds creamy fat and moisture that binds the salad together.

The step that matters

Drain the walnuts after soaking. Soaking walnuts in lemon juice softens them and mellows their bitterness. Draining them well removes excess liquid, so the salad does not turn watery or dilute the oil and mayonnaise dressing.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Lentilsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, olive, lemon. 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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