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Avocado Cup Salads, Two Ways

I have the most boring thing, ever, to tell you today (and clearly it’s not “how to write an enticing lede”): I tried not to eat bread for a couple months. Wait, come back! Let me explain. I don’t mean . I am not anti-carb or anti-dessert, nor is Wheat Belly our new idea of a good bedtime story; I am ever your gluten- host. I remain certain that freshly-baked, crackly-crusted artisanal bread is one of the greatest things in the world; to turn it down a moderate serving of it when you’re able to enjoy it (chemically and all that) is a sacrilege. But that’s not really what most of our bread looks like, does it? Most often, bread is merely bookends on a sandwich, with the goal of making filling portable. Or, it’s toasted so that it can sop up butter, jam or a runny yolk, or crouton-ed to make a salad feel bulkier. It’s all too infrequently in and of itself noteworthy. These latter categories of bread were what I suspected I wouldn’t miss if when I challenged myself to skip them. That is, at least two meals a day: an ascetic, I am not.

By smittenkitchen · From Open Recipes · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and avocado match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,117 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: soy, sesame (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 smittenkitchen. 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. Lime + avocadotop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,117 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lime + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,216 recipes

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

  3. Beans + cumintop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,188 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Pepper + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,491 recipes

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

  5. Jalapeno + cumintop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 (beans, pepper, jalapeno, olive, lime, cumin, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, jalapeno, olive, lime, cumin, sauce. 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).