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Salad

Nasturtium Salad

A salad of apples, celery, walnuts, nasturtium stems, lemon juice, and thick salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Nasturtium Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Combine the apples, celery, walnuts, nasturtium stems, lemon juice, and salad dressing in a bowl.

  2. Mix well and serve soon after combining.

Serve

  1. Select perfect nasturtium leaves, wash and dry them.

  2. Arrange the leaves on salad plates in a circle.

  3. Place a generous heap of the mixture on top of the 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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 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
Provide the crisp, sweet-tart chopped body of the salad.
Celery hearts
Add crunch and a fresh, watery crispness to the mixture.
English walnut meats
Contribute crunch and a nutty, rich flavor.
Nasturtium stems
Add a peppery bite and fresh aroma to the salad.
Thick cooked salad dressing
Binds the chopped ingredients and adds moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Mix well and serve soon after combining. Chopped apples oxidize and turn brown once cut, and dressed celery and apple lose crispness as they sit, so the salad is best assembled and served promptly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, walnut, meat, lemon, egg, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, walnut, meat, lemon, egg, sugar. 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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