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Salad

Pear and Nut Salad

A salad of pears coated in egg white, rolled in walnuts, served on lettuce with dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pear and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coating

  1. Beat the egg white slightly.

  2. Add lemon juice and water to the egg white.

Coat and serve

  1. Dip each drained pear into the egg white mixture.

  2. Roll the dipped pears in chopped walnut meats.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves with salad 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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Pear + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pear + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Binds the chopped walnuts to the pear surfaces as a coating.
Canned pears, drained
Provide the sweet, soft fruit base of the salad.
English walnut meats, chopped fine
Add crunch and a nutty flavor to the coated pears.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lemon, walnut, meat, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, walnut, meat, 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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