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Salad

Hazelnut Salad

A chilled salad of hazelnuts, muscatels, celery, mayonnaise, and whipped cream served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hazelnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the hazelnuts in slightly salted water for 12 hours.

  2. Stone the muscatels.

  3. Wash the celery stalks.

  4. Cut the celery into fine shreds.

  5. Drain the celery well.

Make the salad

  1. Combine the hazelnuts, muscatels, and celery in a bowl.

  2. Season with paprika and coarse sea salt.

  3. Mix in enough mayonnaise and whipped cream to dress the salad.

  4. Chill the salad in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve on lettuce leaves in a pyramidal form, garnished with whipped cream and capers.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Hazelnut + lettucetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Hazelnut + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Hazelnuts
Provide a crunchy, nutty body that holds its texture under the dressing.
Malaga muscatels
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture against the crisp nuts and celery.
White celery stalks
Contribute crisp, fresh moisture and a light crunch to the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess that binds the salad and coats the other ingredients.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and extra richness to the dressing and the garnish.

The step that matters

Drain the celery well. Excess water left on shredded celery thins the mayonnaise and cream dressing and makes the salad watery and loose as it chills.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hazelnut, cream, lettuce, capers):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hazelnut, cream, lettuce, capers. 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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