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Berry Box Smoothie

This is my go-to recipe for smoothies!

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Why it works: Kale and chia share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 7 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 2
Prep5 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. Wash the kale well, remove the tough stems, and tear the leaves into small pieces.

  2. Peel the banana and break it into chunks.

  3. Add the kale, fruit, banana, yogurt, chia seeds, ground flaxseed, and vanilla extract to a blender.

  4. Pour in the almond milk and orange juice.

  5. Blend on high for 1 to 2 minutes, until completely smooth, stopping to scrape down the sides if needed.

  6. Taste and blend briefly again if you want it thinner or sweeter, then pour into glasses 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. Kale + chiatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pineapple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together732 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Banana + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Chia + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pineapple + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the kale

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, yogurt, banana, chia, flaxseed, vanilla, almond):

  1. Arrowrootabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Spinachabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Kalethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, yogurt, banana, chia, flaxseed, vanilla, almond. 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).