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Arugula Salad with Goat Cheese, Toasted Pecans and Cranberry Vinaigrette

This vibrant salad will lend color and bright flavor to any Thanksgiving table. You can make the vinaigrette up to 2 days ahead and refrigerate in an airtight container. Let it stand at room temperature for 20 minutes before assembling the salad.

By williamssonoma · From Open Recipes · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and goat cheese work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and 76 recipes mention both. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

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 williamssonoma. 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. Mustard + goat cheesetop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together76 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together402 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Arugula + goat cheesetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Vinegar and mustard share little aroma chemistry, yet 14,067 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, mustard, canola oil, parsley, pepper, arugula):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Limebetter flavor fit
  3. Cherrybetter flavor fit
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, mustard, canola oil, parsley, pepper, arugula. 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).