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Salad

Peanut Salad

A salad of soaked peanuts, celery, olives, and mayonnaise served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Peanut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the peanuts in olive oil for a few hours.

  2. Drain the peanuts and mix them with the chopped celery and pitted olives.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine the mixture with mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Serve the salad on a bed of 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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  3. Peanut + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Peanut + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Olive + celerytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peanuts
Provide crunch and a nutty flavour that anchors the salad.
Olive oil
Fat that softens the peanuts and carries flavour during soaking.
Celery
Adds crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft dressing.
Olives
Add a briny, savoury flavour that balances the richness.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds creamy moisture and richness that binds the salad together.

The step that matters

Drain the peanuts well. Oil left on the soaked peanuts would thin the mayonnaise dressing and make the salad greasy and loose, so draining thoroughly keeps the dressing thick and clinging.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, celery, lettuce. 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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