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Summer Apple and Pear Salad Recipe

Baby spinach, pears, apples, feta, walnuts and beetroot combine to make a refreshing summer salad, drizzled with a walnut and thyme dressing.

By lovefood · From Open Recipes · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 648 recipes mention both. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

6 people
Prep10 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, tree nuts (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 lovefood. 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. Pear + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together648 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Spinach + beetroottop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together280 recipes

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

  3. Apple + white winetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together357 recipes

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

  4. Spinach + feta cheesetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together374 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + beetroottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, pear, apple, feta cheese, beetroot, lemon, white wine):

  1. Peasbetter flavor fit
  2. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  3. Beansbetter flavor fit
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, pear, apple, feta cheese, beetroot, lemon, white wine. 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).