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Peanut Salad

A salad made with ground peanuts, eggs, pickles, sugar, butter, mustard, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Peanut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the peanuts, then the hard-boiled eggs, and finally the pickles using a meat grinder with a coarse setting for the pickles.

  2. In a bowl, rub together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the prepared mustard, salt, pepper, and celery salt to the mixture.

  4. Incorporate the well-beaten egg into the mixture.

Cook and thicken

  1. Heat the mixture on the stove, adding vinegar until it reaches a gravy-like consistency, stirring continuously.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Peanut + mustardtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together102 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
The beaten egg adds richness and helps bind the mixture together when heated.
Butter
Fat that softens the mixture and adds richness and smooth mouthfeel.
Peanuts
Provide the main body, nutty flavor and bulk of the salad.
Sweet pickles
Add sweetness, tang and crunchy texture to the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.

The step that matters

Heating with vinegar until gravy-like. Heating a mixture containing a beaten egg thickens it as the egg proteins set, but excessive heat can curdle it. Stirring continuously and adding vinegar gradually lets the mixture thicken evenly while keeping it smooth.

Swap the peanut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, mustard, pepper, celery, vinegar):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, mustard, pepper, celery, vinegar. 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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