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Salad

Italian Salad

A cold salad of macaroni, tomato jelly, clams, celery, and bell peppers, topped with lettuce and dressed with French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Italian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni mould

  1. Mould the cooked macaroni in the tomato jelly.

Prepare the bell peppers

  1. Cut the tops off the bell peppers.

  2. Remove seeds and veins from the bell peppers.

  3. Soak the bell peppers in cold water until ready to use.

  4. For the bell pepper filling, mix tomatoes, minced onion, and cracker crumbs.

  5. Season with salt, lemon juice, and a little oil.

  6. Fill the bell peppers with the mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. When serving, fill the center with a mixture of clams, macaroni, and celery, moistened with mayonnaise.

  2. Garnish with sliced pimentos and lettuce.

  3. Place the filled peppers in a cup of lettuce leaves.

  4. Pour French dressing over the arrangement.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked macaroni
Forms the bulk and body of the salad, holding its shape in the molded centre.
Tomato jelly
Sets around the macaroni to give the salad a firm, molded shape.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture that coats the clam, macaroni and celery mixture.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and bind the tomato and onion filling so it holds together.
Cooked chopped clams
Provide the seafood flavour and chewy texture in the centre filling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, clam, celery, lettuce, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clam, celery, lettuce, pepper, 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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