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Homemade Falafels with Salad and Pitta Bread

These falafels are baked rather than fried for a healthy take on this simple and delicious Middle Eastern dish. This is designed to be a low cost recipe.

By bbcfood · From Open Recipes · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Chickpea and bread work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and 21 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4
Prep30 min
Cook30 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, wheat (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 bbcfood. 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. Chickpea + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21 recipes

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

  2. Chickpea + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + cumintop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,083 recipes

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

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 (olive, garlic, chickpea, cumin, lemon, pepper, egg):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, garlic, chickpea, cumin, lemon, pepper, egg. 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).