Skip to main content

Apple and Chicken Tacos with Pumpkin Mayo

Looking for a lighter way to incorporate pumpkin into your diet? Try these light and refreshing apple and chicken tacos with pumpkin mayo!

Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pumpkin and chicken work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 700 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 8
Prep15 min
Cook15 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (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. Stir together the pumpkin puree and mayonnaise in a bowl, then season with a pinch of the salt and a pinch of the black pepper. Cover and refrigerate until serving.

  2. Mix the remaining salt, black pepper, chili powder, cumin, pumpkin pie spice and cayenne pepper in a small bowl.

  3. Pat the chicken breasts dry and cut them into thin strips. Toss the strips with the spice mixture until evenly coated.

  4. Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the chicken in a single layer, turning once, for 5 to 7 minutes until it reaches 165°F (74°C) in the thickest part.

  5. Warm the flour tortillas in a dry skillet over medium heat for about 30 seconds per side, or until soft and pliable.

  6. Add the diced apples to the same skillet and cook for 2 to 3 minutes until just softened, stirring often.

  7. Spread pumpkin mayo over each tortilla. Fill with chicken, apples, baby arugula and crumbled feta cheese.

  8. Fold or roll each taco and serve right away.

By tastykitchen. 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. Pumpkin + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together700 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Pepper + cumintop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,382 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cumin + chickentop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,937 recipes

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

  4. Cumin + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,196 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + feta cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together247 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 arugula

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pumpkin, pepper, cumin, chicken, flour, apple, feta cheese):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, pepper, cumin, chicken, flour, apple, feta 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).