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Waldorf Salad

A salad of apples, nuts, mayonnaise, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Illustration of Waldorf SaladIllustration

Why it works: Nuts and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 174 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the apples carefully and scoop out a good amount of the inside to create a cup.

  2. Chop the scooped-out apple.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the chopped apple with chopped nuts and mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Fill the apple cups with the mixture.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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.

The picture is an illustration, not a photo of this recipe · 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Nuts + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Apple + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Apple + nutstop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Form the hollow cups and add crisp, juicy chopped fruit to the filling.
Chopped nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty contrast to the soft filling.
Mayonnaise dressing
Binds the chopped apple and nuts together and adds richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Scooping out the apple cups. If the apple wall is too thin it can tear or collapse, and if it is too thick the cup holds less filling. Cutting carefully keeps the shell sturdy enough to hold the mixture without breaking the skin.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nuts, lettuce):

  1. Cherrybetter flavor fit
  2. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  3. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nuts, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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