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Salad

Apple Salad

A salad of tart apples, celery, walnuts, mayonnaise dressing, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select tart, juicy apples and chip them.

  2. Slice celery very thin and add walnuts; mix well.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour mayonnaise dressing over the mixture.

  2. Garnish with lettuce and serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

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

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

  5. 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, juicy apples
Provide the main body and tart flavour that balances the rich dressing.
Celery
Adds crisp, fresh texture that contrasts with the soft apples.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour to the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess that coats the apples, celery and walnuts.
Lettuce
Adds a crisp, fresh base and garnish for the salad.

The step that matters

Serve immediately after dressing. Cut apples oxidise and turn brown when exposed to air, and they soften and lose crispness once dressed. Serving right away keeps the colour, texture and crunch intact.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, walnut, 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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