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Salad Sandwiches

A sandwich filled with a mixture of sliced apples, dates, walnuts, salad dressing, and tender lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Salad Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the apples, dates, walnuts, and salad dressing until well combined.

  2. Spread the mixture between slices of bread.

  3. Add tender lettuce to the sandwiches before closing.

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. Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Dates + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Apple + datestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 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

Apples
Add moisture and a fresh, mildly sweet flavor to the filling.
Dates
Add sweetness and a soft, chewy texture to the filling.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, slightly bitter nuttiness to the filling.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture and fat that bind the chopped fruit and nuts together.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, walnut, bread, 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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