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Apple Salad

A salad made with hollowed apples filled with chopped apples, celery, nuts, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Slice the top off each apple and scoop out the inside, being careful not to break the skin.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the apple, celery, and nuts very finely in a chopping bowl.

  2. Mix the chopped ingredients well with the mayonnaise.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the apple shells with this mixture and replace the tops.

  2. Through the stem holes, stick leafy stalks of celery.

  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.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Nuts + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red apples
Hollowed shells that hold the filling and provide crisp, tart flesh.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, watery texture to the filling.
Nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, slightly bitter flavor that contrasts the soft filling.
Mayonnaise dressing
Binds the chopped ingredients together and adds richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Scoop out the apples without breaking the skin. The skin forms the shell that holds the filling, so a torn skin lets the mixture leak out and weakens the presentation.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, nuts, walnut, lettuce. 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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