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Apple Salad

A salad of diced apples, celery, and walnuts mixed with a creamy sauce of eggs, vinegar, mustard, butter, sugar, pepper, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, mix the diced apples, chopped celery, broken walnuts, salt, and sugar.

Make the dressing

  1. In a double boiler, combine 1 tablespoon sugar, mustard, pepper, beaten eggs, vinegar, and butter.

  2. Cook until slightly thickened, then let cool.

  3. Thin the mixture with cream and combine with the salad.

Serve

  1. For serving, take as many red apples as there are guests, cut off the tops, and scoop out the insides.

  2. Scallop the tops with a knife, fill the apples with the salad, and serve on individual plates.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and set, giving it body.
Apples
Provide the crisp, juicy base of the salad.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty texture to the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a mild, fresh bite.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the dressing.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the cooked dressing.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing until slightly thickened. Egg proteins set as they heat, so cooking gently in a double boiler thickens the dressing without scrambling the eggs. Overheating causes curdling, so it must be watched closely.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, walnut, sugar, mustard, pepper, egg, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, walnut, sugar, mustard, pepper, egg, vinegar. 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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