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Waldorf Salad

A fruit and nut salad with apples, banana, walnuts, celery, lemon juice, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Waldorf Salad

Why it works: Apple and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Waldorf Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and dice the apples and banana.

  2. Chop the walnuts.

  3. Cut the celery into small pieces.

Assemble

  1. Squeeze the lemon juice over the mixture.

  2. Mix everything with mayonnaise dressing.

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. Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the crisp, juicy base and a tart-sweet flavor.
Banana
Adds sweetness and a soft, creamy texture to the mix.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor against the soft fruit.
Celery
Adds crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and slows browning of cut fruit.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture that coat the pieces and bind the salad.

The step that matters

Squeeze the lemon juice over the mixture. Cut apple and banana flesh oxidizes and turns brown quickly when exposed to air. The acid in lemon juice slows this browning, so the juice should go on soon after dicing.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, walnut, celery, lemon. 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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