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Salad

Cherry Salad

A salad of chilled cherries, walnuts, lettuce, and a creamy dressing made from egg yolks, sugar, vinegar, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cherry Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill the cherries.

  2. Add the walnuts to the chilled cherries.

Serve

  1. Serve on lettuce leaves with your choice of salad dressing.

  2. Alternatively, fill each cherry with a filbert or peanut.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, beat together the egg yolks, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add vinegar and cook until thickened.

  3. Once cooled, fold in the whipped cream.

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. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook and add richness and a smooth body.
Sour cherries
Provide tartness and juicy moisture that balances the sweet dressing.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, slightly bitter contrast to the soft fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and brightens the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the vinegar's sharpness.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and lightness, making the cooled dressing creamy and airy.

The step that matters

Cool the cooked dressing before folding in the whipped cream. Egg yolks can scramble if overheated, so the dressing should be cooked gently and cooled. A warm base would also melt and deflate the whipped cream, losing its lightness.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, egg, vinegar, sugar, pepper, cream):

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, vinegar, sugar, pepper, cream. 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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