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Red Bean Salad with Feta and Peppers

"A tasty, nutrient-packed salad that can be eaten by itself or as a side dish. Makes a great lunch the next day too! Add more lemon juice and olive oil if you like your salad to have a lot of dressing. Use garbanzo beans in place of kidney beans if you prefer."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,118 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

The recipe

4 servings
Prep20 min

Ingredients

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

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Drain and rinse the kidney beans in a colander, then tip them into a large mixing bowl.

  2. Add the chopped red bell pepper, chopped cabbage, sliced green onions, and chopped parsley to the bowl.

  3. In a small bowl, whisk the minced garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil together until combined.

  4. Pour the dressing over the salad and toss well so every ingredient is coated.

  5. Fold in the crumbled feta cheese gently so it stays in pieces.

  6. Chill the salad for 10 minutes before serving so the flavors blend.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

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

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,080 recipes

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

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

Flavor stand-ins for the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cabbage, onion, feta cheese, parsley, garlic, lemon):

  1. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  2. Beansbetter flavor fit
  3. Sesamebetter flavor fit
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, onion, feta cheese, parsley, garlic, lemon. 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).