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Salad

Grape and Cheese Salad

A salad of grapes and lettuce dressed with French dressing and topped with riced cream cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 349 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Grape and Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut one side of the grapes open with a small knife and remove the seeds.

Assemble and serve

  1. Serve the grapes on a bed of lettuce.

  2. Drizzle with French dressing.

  3. Pass the cream cheese through a ricer and cover the salad with it.

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. Grape + lettucetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

  2. Grape + cream cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together176 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lettuce + cream cheesetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

White malaga grapes
Provide the sweet, juicy fruit that forms the body of the salad.
Cream cheese
Adds richness and a mild, creamy texture that contrasts with the crisp fruit and lettuce.
French dressing
Adds moisture and a sweet-tart tang that brightens the fruit and cheese.
Lettuce
Provides a crisp, cool base that holds the grapes and dressing.

The step that matters

Passing the cream cheese through a ricer. Pressing cream cheese through a ricer breaks it into fine, soft strands that spread evenly over the salad. Cold, firm cheese pushed through unevenly forms clumps, so a smooth, even layer depends on the cheese being at a workable texture.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

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