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Everyone's Favorite Spinach Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

"This recipe quickly becomes the favorite of pretty much everyone that tries it. It's so tasty, it's easy to make, and the ingredients are interchangeable! You can use the dressing immediately or make it in advance and store in refrigerator up to a couple of days. I have substituted pears and mandarin oranges for the strawberries and feta instead of blue cheese. Be creative! YUM!"

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Poppy seed and spinach share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 31 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

4 servings
Prep20 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, tree nuts, soy, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Poppy seed + spinachtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Onion + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,335 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Poppy seed + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Vinegar + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,203 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Onion + blue cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, poppy seed, sauce, spinach, blue cheese):

  1. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, poppy seed, sauce, spinach, blue cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).