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Salad

Nut Salad

A salad of apples, cabbage, celery, onion, and walnuts or pecans dressed with mayonnaise and served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Nut Salad

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the apples, cabbage, celery, and onion.

  2. Combine the chopped apples, cabbage, celery, onion, and walnuts or pecans in a bowl.

  3. To prevent apples from browning, tie them in a wet cloth and place on ice until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Serve with mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Serve the salad on lettuce leaves and garnish with parsley.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the crisp, juicy base of the salad.
English walnuts or pecans
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavor to the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad and softening its crunch.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mildly sharp flavor.

The step that matters

Keeping the apples from browning. Cut apple flesh oxidizes quickly when exposed to air, turning brown and mushy in appearance. Keeping the pieces wet and cold slows this oxidation, so they stay pale and fresh until serving.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, celery, onion, walnut, lettuce, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, onion, walnut, lettuce, parsley. 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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