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Salad

English Walnut Salad

A walnut salad with boiled walnuts, onion, bay leaf, salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, lettuce, and orange garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

English Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Boil the walnut meats with the onion slice, bay leaf, and coarse sea salt until slightly softened.

  2. Drain and cool.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the coarse sea salt and white pepper.

  2. Add the salad oil and onion juice, rubbing until the salt dissolves.

  3. Mix in the additional salad oil and vinegar, beating until the mixture is whitish and thick.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad on a bed of lettuce and garnish with orange slices cut into points.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together373 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

English walnut meats
Form the main body of the salad and provide a rich, nutty flavor and crisp-tender bite after boiling.
Salad oil
Carries fat-soluble flavors and gives the dressing a smooth, rich body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the walnuts and, rubbed with the oil, helps dissolve into the dressing.

The step that matters

Beating the dressing until whitish and thick. Beating whisks air into the oil and vinegar mixture and helps it emulsify, so it turns pale and thick instead of separating into layers. Stopping too early leaves a thin, oily dressing that will pool on the lettuce.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, meat, onion, vinegar, lettuce, orange):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, meat, onion, vinegar, lettuce, orange. 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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