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Salad

Waldo Salad

A salad of diced apples, celery, walnuts, lemon juice, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce or orange slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Waldo Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. In a large bowl, combine the diced apples, chopped celery, and chopped walnuts.

  2. Add the lemon juice and mix well.

  3. Fold in the mayonnaise dressing until everything is coated.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad on a bed of lettuce or on orange slices.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide crisp texture and natural sweetness that balance the richer dressing.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, slightly savoury bite.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour with some fat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and slows browning of cut apples.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess that coats the fruit, vegetables and nuts.

The step that matters

Add the lemon juice before the dressing. Cut apple surfaces oxidise and turn brown quickly. Acid from the lemon juice slows this reaction, so it should be mixed in promptly after the apples are diced.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, walnut, lemon, 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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