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Salad

Prune and Cheese Salad

A salad of prunes stuffed with cream cheese and mayonnaise, served on 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 ↓

Prune and Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cream the cheese with the mayonnaise.

  2. Add the walnut meats to the mixture.

  3. Roll the mixture into tiny balls.

Assemble and serve

  1. Stuff the balls into the cooked seeded prunes.

  2. Serve on lettuce leaves with additional mayonnaise.

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. Cream cheese + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Cream cheese + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together579 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

Cream cheese
Provides a creamy, rich base that holds the filling together and gives it body.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, making the cheese mixture soft and easy to shape.
English walnut meats
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft filling and sweet prunes.
Seeded prunes
Supply sweetness and a chewy texture that balances the savory cheese filling.

The step that matters

Roll the mixture into tiny balls. The filling must be soft enough to shape but firm enough to hold its form. Too much mayonnaise makes it slack and hard to roll, so chill it briefly if it softens while you work.

“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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