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Strawberry-Blackberry Spinach Salad

A beautiful and delicious salad that takes advantage of fresh berries and can easily be a side or main dish.

By tastykitchen · From Open Recipes · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and feta cheese work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 374 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4
Prep10 min
Cook5 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, tree nuts (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. Hull and slice the fresh strawberries. Rinse the blackberries and pat them dry with paper towels.

  2. Place the spinach leaves in a large salad bowl.

  3. In a small saucepan over low heat, warm the balsamic vinegar and honey for about 2 minutes, stirring until the honey dissolves. Remove from the heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Whisk the cooled vinegar mixture with the olive oil until smooth and slightly thickened.

  5. Chop the roasted cashews coarsely.

  6. Add the strawberries and blackberries to the spinach in the bowl.

  7. Drizzle the dressing over the salad and toss gently until the leaves are lightly coated.

  8. Scatter the crumbled feta and chopped cashews over the top 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. Spinach + feta cheesetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together374 recipes

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

  2. Feta cheese + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,438 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  3. Vinegar + honeytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Spinach + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Vinegar + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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