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Salad

Apple Salad

A chilled salad of sliced apples, sugar, citrus juice, optional onion, oil, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel and slice the apples.

  2. Sprinkle the apple slices with sugar and the juice of the orange or lemon.

  3. If desired, mix in thin slices of the onion, oil, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  4. Serve chilled.

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. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Apple + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Orange + oniontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main body and fresh, tart flavour of the salad.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple slices and balances the tartness of the fruit and citrus.
Orange or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and slows browning of the cut apple.

The step that matters

Sprinkle the apples with citrus juice and sugar soon after slicing. Cut apple flesh oxidises and turns brown when exposed to air. Acid from the citrus juice slows this browning, so the slices should be coated promptly after they are cut.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, orange):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, orange. 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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