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Cranberry Sauce with Nuts

A sweet cranberry sauce mixed with walnuts, served on lettuce leaves.

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 ↓

Cranberry Sauce with Nuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook cranberries in water until done.

  2. Strain through a sieve.

  3. Add sugar to the cranberry juice.

  4. Cook until it jells.

Set and serve

  1. Place walnuts in a mold.

  2. Pour the cranberry mixture over the walnuts.

  3. Set in a cool place until firm.

  4. Cut into cubes.

  5. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lettucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit base and natural pectin that help the mixture jell.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart cranberry juice and helps it set into a firm gel.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft jellied cranberry.

The step that matters

Cook until it jells. Cranberry jelly sets because pectin and sugar concentrate as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves a loose mixture that will not firm up when cooled, while overcooking can make it stiff and sugary.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Beetrootfits about as well
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, walnut. 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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