Skip to main content
Salad

Neufchatel Salad

A chilled salad of Neufchatel cheese, olives, cream, salt, pepper, lettuce, and red pepper strips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Neufchatel Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese mixture

  1. Mash the Neufchatel cheese in a bowl.

  2. Add the finely chopped olives and moisten with cream.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Form the mixture into small balls.

Serve

  1. Serve the balls on a bed of shredded lettuce.

  2. Garnish with the red pepper strips arranged in star shape.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Cheese + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,802 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  5. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Neufchatel cheese
Forms the creamy base that holds the salad together and gives it a soft, spreadable texture.
Olives
Adds salty, briny flavour that contrasts with the mild, rich cheese.
Cream
Adds moisture so the cheese becomes soft enough to shape into balls.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, olive, cream, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes