Skip to main content
Salad

Apple and Nut Salad

A salad of apples, celery, walnuts, mayonnaise, watercress, and French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Walnut and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 71 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Apple and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Scoop out the insides of the tart apples.

  2. Mix chopped celery and blanched walnut meats.

  3. Moisten the mixture with mayonnaise.

  4. Fill the apples with the mixture.

Make the salad and dress

  1. Mix slices of pippins with watercress.

  2. Dress with French 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.

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 + watercresstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  3. Celery + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples
Hollowed out to hold the filling, and their tartness balances the rich mayonnaise.
Walnut meats
Add crunch and a slightly bitter, nutty flavour to the soft filling.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture so the celery and walnut mixture binds and stays creamy.
Celery
Contributes crisp texture and fresh, watery crunch to the filling.
French dressing
Adds acidity and sweetness that brightens the apples and watercress.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, walnut, meat, watercress. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes