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Salad

Combination Salad

A salad of walnuts, celery, and apples dressed with a sweet and tangy vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Combination Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine walnuts, celery, apples, and salt.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, mix vinegar, sugar, egg, and butter.

  2. Cook the dressing over low heat until thick, stirring constantly.

  3. Let the dressing cool, then pour it over the salad and mix well.

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 + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  2. Celery + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and gives it a creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the dressing.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and offsets the acidity of the vinegar.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor to the salad.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing over low heat. The egg can scramble if the heat is too high. Gentle, constant stirring lets the egg proteins thicken the mixture smoothly without curdling.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, apple, vinegar, sugar, egg, butter. 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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