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Salad

Apple Salad

A salad of sliced apples, peas, and lettuce dressed with salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Apple Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the apples for salad as usual.

  2. Add ½ can of carefully drained peas.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toss together with salad dressing.

  2. Serve in nests of crisp lettuce.

  3. If the lettuce is not fresh, shred it with scissors to create a nest for garnish.

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. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Apple + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provides the main crisp, juicy body of the salad.
Peas
Adds a mild sweetness, bright color and a soft bite.
Salad dressing
Moistens and flavors the apples and peas as it coats them.

The step that matters

Add ½ can of carefully drained peas.. Excess liquid left on the peas would thin the dressing and make the salad watery, so draining them well keeps the coating clinging to the ingredients.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, 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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