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Salad

Neufchatel Cheese Salad

A chilled salad of mashed Neufchatel cheese, whipped cream, halved pimolas, pecans, and seasonings, served on lettuce with mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Neufchatel Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Run the Neufchatel cheese through a potato masher.

  2. Add the whipped cream, halved pimolas, and broken pecans.

  3. Season with red pepper, white pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Grease a mold with almond oil and pack the mixture into it.

Chill and serve

  1. Pack the mold in ice and salt for 4 hours.

  2. To serve, turn out the salad onto a bed of lettuce leaves.

  3. Decorate with halved pimolas and serve with mayonnaise dressing.

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. Almond + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pecans + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Pecans + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Neufchatel cheese
Forms the creamy, firm body of the salad once mashed and chilled.
Rich cream
Adds moisture and a softer, lighter texture when whipped into the cheese.
Pecans
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft cheese.
Pimolas
Add mild sweetness and color through the salad and as decoration.

The step that matters

Pack the mold in ice and salt for 4 hours. The ice and salt chill the mold slowly and evenly, so the cheese sets firm enough to turn out cleanly without becoming watery or melting at the edges.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, cream, pecans, pepper, almond, lettuce):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, cream, pecans, pepper, almond, 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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