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Peach Salad

A chilled salad of sliced peaches, nuts, cherries, mayonnaise, lettuce hearts, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mixed nuts and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Peach Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Pare and cut large yellow peaches in half.

  2. Drop the peach halves into ice water to chill and prevent browning.

Assemble and serve

  1. Chop the mixed nuts and cherries, then mix with mayonnaise.

  2. Fill the peach halves with the nut and cherry mixture placed on lettuce hearts.

  3. Top with a puff of thick whipped cream and serve very cold, two halves per plate.

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. Mixed nuts + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Peach + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34 recipes

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

  3. Mixed nuts + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Peach + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together721 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow peaches
Provide the fruit base and sweetness that the filling sits in.
Mixed nuts
Add crunch and contrast to the soft fruit and creamy filling.
Cherries
Add sweetness and a bright, tart note to the filling.
Mayonnaise
Binds the chopped nuts and cherries into a creamy, spreadable filling.
Thick whipped cream
Adds a light, rich topping that softens the salad's flavors.

The step that matters

Dropping the peach halves into ice water. Cut peach flesh oxidises quickly and turns brown on contact with air. Chilling in ice water slows enzyme activity and keeps the fruit pale and fresh-looking until serving.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mixed nuts, lettuce, cream. 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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