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Salad

Stuffed Spiced Prune Salad

A salad of prunes stuffed with pecans served with lettuce and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stuffed Spiced Prune Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash and soak the prunes overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, mix the vinegar, brown sugar, spices, and sliced lemon.

  2. Boil the mixture for five minutes.

  3. Add the prunes to the mixture and let them stand for five minutes.

  4. Place the prunes in a dish and let them cool.

Stuff and serve

  1. Remove the stones from the prunes and replace each with a pecan.

  2. Serve the stuffed prunes on a bed of lettuce with 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Prunes
Provide the main body, soft texture and sweetness of the salad.
Pecans
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft prunes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps flavor the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and prunes.

Swap the pecans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, lemon, nutmeg, allspice, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, lemon, nutmeg, allspice, clove, cinnamon. 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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