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Salad

Nut and Olive Salad

A salad of walnuts, olives, hard‑boiled eggs, and French dressing served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Nut and Olive Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. In a saucepan, combine walnuts, onion, salt, bay leaf, and mace. Cover with boiling water and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Transfer to ice water until chilled, then drain and dry on a towel.

Prepare the garnish and salad

  1. Cut hard-boiled eggs into quarters lengthwise.

  2. Cut olives into long strips.

  3. Mix walnuts and olives, then marinate with French dressing.

Serve

  1. Serve on a platter lined with lettuce leaves and garnish with egg quarters.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Provide the main crunchy, nutty texture of the salad.
Olives
Add briny, salty flavour and a firm texture that contrasts with the nuts.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, mild richness and a creamy contrast to the nuts and olives.
French dressing
Adds acidity and oil that moisten the nuts and olives and carry flavour.

The step that matters

Chilling and drying the walnuts. Chilling in ice water stops the nuts from cooking further after boiling, and drying them well keeps the dressing from being diluted so the nuts stay crisp-textured.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, onion, egg, olive, lettuce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, onion, egg, olive, 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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