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Salad

Waldorf Salad

A salad of apples, celery, lettuce, mayonnaise, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Waldorf Salad

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 ↓

Waldorf Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the celery and lettuce thoroughly.

  2. Peel and cut the apples into ¼ inch dice.

  3. Cut the celery into thin slices crosswise.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the apples, celery, and mayonnaise well.

  2. Place the mixture on the leaves of the heart of the lettuce in a salad bowl.

  3. Sprinkle the chopped walnuts over the top.

  4. Serve very cold as soon as made with toasted butter thins.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  4. Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the crisp, juicy body and mildly sweet-tart flavor of the salad.
Celery
Adds a crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft apple and mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess that coats the apple and celery and binds them together.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty, slightly bitter flavor that balances the sweetness of the apples.

The step that matters

Serve as soon as the salad is mixed. Once cut, apple flesh oxidizes and begins to brown, and it softens and releases juice as it sits in the dressing. Celery also loses its crispness over time. Serving promptly, and very cold, keeps the apple firm and bright and the celery crunchy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, celery, 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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