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 ↓
Prune Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the prunes
Wash the prunes thoroughly and soak them overnight.
Cook the prunes in the same water until tender, then cool.
Pit the prunes and stuff them with English walnuts or cottage cheese.
Assemble and serve
Shred the lettuce and create a nest with the shreds.
Place 3 or 4 stuffed prunes in the lettuce nest.
Cover the prunes with mayonnaise and serve.
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.
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Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together491 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
- Prunes
- Form the main body of the salad, providing sweetness and a soft, tender texture after cooking.
- English walnuts or cottage cheese
- Fill the pitted prunes, adding crunch or creamy richness against the soft fruit.
- Mayonnaise
- Adds fat and creaminess, coating the prunes and balancing their sweetness.
The step that matters
Cook the prunes until tender. Prunes must be fully softened so they are easy to pit and stuff without tearing. Cooking in the soaking water rehydrates the fruit evenly, and cooling them before pitting keeps the skins from splitting and the filling from oozing out.
“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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