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Kale & Basil Pesto Caprese Pasta Salad

This caprese pasta salad gets a twist with kale pesto and crispy prosciutto—perfect for your next summer potluck or barbecue!

By tastykitchen · From Open Recipes · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Kale and pasta share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 39 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4
Prep15 min
Cook30 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, 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 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. Kale + pastatop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Basil + pinetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Basil + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Kale + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (kale, basil, pine, clove, garlic, pepper, parmesan cheese):

  1. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  2. Beansbetter flavor fit
  3. Walnutbetter flavor fit
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against kale, basil, pine, clove, garlic, pepper, parmesan 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).