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Salad

Walnut Salad

A salad of lettuce, orange slices, walnuts, mayonnaise, and hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and walnut 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 ↓

Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Arrange lettuce leaves into a nest on a salad plate.

  2. Place orange slices (cut into quarters) and English walnut halves on the lettuce.

  3. Drizzle a thin layer of mayonnaise dressing over each piece and serve.

Toss and serve

  1. Chop the lettuce and the egg whites separately, not too finely.

  2. Toss lightly together and sprinkle with chopped walnuts and coarsely chopped egg yolks.

  3. Pour any good salad dressing over the mixture and serve on crisp lettuce.

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. Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together373 recipes

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

  3. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Walnut + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

English walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty fat that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Orange slices
Add juicy acidity and sweetness that brighten the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a soft, creamy texture and body from the chopped yolks and whites.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess that coats the leaves and other ingredients.
Lettuce leaves
Provide a crisp, cool base that holds the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Drizzle only a thin layer of mayonnaise dressing. Dressing is mostly oil and water-based liquid. Too much of it soaks into the lettuce and draws out moisture, so the leaves wilt and turn soggy. A thin coating keeps the lettuce crisp.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, walnut, egg. 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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