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Salad

Prune Salad

A salad of soaked prunes, almonds, cheese, and lettuce dressed with French Dressing No. 2 and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Prune Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes thoroughly and cover them with cold water.

  2. Let the prunes soak overnight.

  3. Cook the prunes in the same water until tender.

  4. Add sugar for the last five minutes of cooking.

  5. Cool and drain the prunes.

  6. Make an incision in one side of each prune and remove the pits.

Fill and serve

  1. Toast an equal number of almonds.

  2. Roll one teaspoon of cheese over each nut meat.

  3. Refill the prunes with the cheese, pressing the edges half over the filling.

  4. Arrange four medium-sized or three large prunes in nests of lettuce heart leaves.

  5. Marinate with French Dressing No. 2.

  6. Mask with 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. Almond + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Cottage cheese + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Almond + cottage cheesetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Sugar + cottage cheesetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Prunes
Provide the main fruit body, softened by cooking into a tender, sweet base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the cooking liquid and prunes.
Almonds
Add toasted nutty flavor and crunch that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Cottage cheese or neufchatel cheese
Provides a mild, creamy filling that balances the sweetness of the prunes.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat that coats the salad and softens its tang.

The step that matters

Cook the prunes until tender, then cool and drain. Overcooking makes prunes split and collapse, so they cannot hold their shape around the filling. Cooling firms them so the incision and stuffing stay clean.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, almond, cottage cheese):

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Beetrootfits about as well
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond, cottage 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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