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Salad

Waldorf Salad

A salad of diced tart apples, celery, mayonnaise, served on lettuce or hollowed apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Waldorf Salad

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Waldorf Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and dice the apples.

  2. Measure the diced apples and take the same amount of diced celery.

Mix and serve

  1. Mix the apples and celery together.

  2. Add mayonnaise to the mixture and stir to combine.

  3. Serve the salad on nests of lettuce or in hollowed-out red apples.

  4. Top with a layer of dressing and garnish with a small leaf of lettuce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples
Provide the crisp texture and tart flavor that balance the rich dressing.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, mild vegetal flavor to the salad.
Mayonnaise
Binds the chopped ingredients together and adds richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Dress the salad just before serving. Apples brown once cut and exposed to air, and they release moisture that thins the mayonnaise over time. Dressing and serving promptly keeps the texture crisp and the dressing thick.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, 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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