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Walnut Salad

A salad of lettuce, orange slices, walnuts, hard‑boiled eggs, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and walnut 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 ↓

Walnut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the nested salad

  1. Make a nest of lettuce leaves on a salad dish.

  2. Cut the orange into slices and then the slices into quarters.

  3. Arrange the orange quarters on the lettuce.

  4. Add a few halves of English walnuts on top.

  5. Place a thin layer of mayonnaise dressing on each piece. Serve.

Make the chopped salad

  1. Chop the lettuce and the whites of the hard-boiled eggs separately, not too fine.

  2. Toss the lettuce and egg whites lightly together.

  3. Sprinkle the top thickly with English walnuts and coarsely chopped egg yolks.

  4. Pour over any good salad dressing.

  5. Serve on crisp lettuces.

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. Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together373 recipes

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

  3. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Walnut + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Provides a crisp, fresh base that holds the other ingredients.
Orange
Adds juiciness, sweetness and acidity that brighten the salad.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, fatty flavour against the softer ingredients.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess, coating each piece with moisture and richness.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks add richness and body, while the whites contribute a firm, mild texture.

The step that matters

Chop the lettuce and egg whites separately, not too fine. Chopping too finely bruises the lettuce and breaks down the egg whites, releasing water and turning the salad soft and watery instead of crisp with distinct pieces.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, walnut, egg. 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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