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Salad

Nutora Salad

A salad of nutora cubes and celery with a lemon‑nut butter dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Nutora Salad

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Heat the nut butter with water and lemon juice in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over a well-beaten egg in a double boiler.

  3. Cook while stirring constantly until creamy.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Mix the nutora cubes and sliced celery together in a bowl and heap onto a salad dish.

  2. Pour the dressing around the edge of the salad, leaving some in the center.

  3. Garnish with slices of nutora or peanuts.

  4. Decorate the plate with parsley.

  5. Cut the ends from a lemon.

  6. Insert parsley leaves.

  7. Place it in the center.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Celery + peanuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together148 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Nutora
Forms the bulk of the salad, providing the main body and texture.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, crunchy contrast to the salad.
Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it a creamy, smooth body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness.
Nut butter
Adds richness and nutty flavor to the dressing.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg dressing. Egg proteins set when heated, so the mixture must be stirred constantly over gentle heat in a double boiler. Too much heat can scramble the egg and make the dressing grainy instead of creamy.

Swap the peanut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, butter, lemon, egg, parsley):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, butter, lemon, egg, parsley. 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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