Skip to main content
Salad

Cherry Salad

A chilled salad of pitted cherries, filberts, lettuce, and a vinaigrette made with vinegar, sugar, butter, mustard, and cherry juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cherry Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove the seeds from the cherries and insert filberts.

  2. Place the cherries on lettuce leaves.

Make the dressing

  1. In a double boiler, heat the vinegar.

  2. Beat the eggs very lightly, then add sugar, butter, mustard, and salt.

  3. Pour the mixture into the hot vinegar and cook until it thickens.

  4. Once thickened, add salt and let cool.

  5. Thin the dressing with cherry juice and whipped cream before serving.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Hazelnut + lettucetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Hazelnut + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Filbert + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and set, giving it a creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the dressing and cherries.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Whipped cream
Lightens the dressing and adds a soft, airy texture.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the hot vinegar and cook until it thickens. Egg proteins thicken gently as they heat; if the mixture heats too fast or too hot, the eggs can scramble and curdle. A double boiler keeps the heat gentle and steady.

Swap the filbert

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hazelnut, lettuce, egg, vinegar, sugar, butter, mustard):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Filbertthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hazelnut, lettuce, egg, vinegar, sugar, butter, mustard. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes