Name: Spinach Pear
Ingredients: 3 Cups fresh spinach leaves, torn into bite-size pieces; 2 pretty leaves butter or romaine lettuce; 1 medium comice (or anything in season) pear, peeled, coredand cut in 1/2 inch dice; 1/3 Cup pomegranate seeds; 1/8 tsp cracked black pepper; 3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar, or less if you can afford good balsamic (or raspberry red wine vin, red wine vin., as you like)

Why it works: Spinach and pomegranate share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 36 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

3 Cups fresh spinach leaves, torn into bite-size pieces
2 pretty leaves butter or romaine lettuce
1 medium comice (or anything in season) pear, peeled, coredand cut in 1/2 inch dice
1/3 Cup pomegranate seeds
1/8 tsp cracked black pepper
3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar, or less if you can afford good balsamic (or raspberry red wine vin, red wine vin., as you like)

Directions

Prepare

Toss diced pear with pepper and 1 Tbsp of the vinegar.
Place one lettuce leaf on each serving plate.

Assemble and serve

Divide the spinach between the two plates and sprinkle with remaining vinegar, to taste.
Distribute diced pear over the spinach, toss pomegranate seeds over the salads.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

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.

Spinach + pomegranatetop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together36 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Spinach + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,400 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pear + pomegranatetop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together24 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).
Pomegranate + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together234 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Pepper + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together27,805 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach leaves: Forms the leafy base of the salad and provides a fresh, slightly bitter bite.
Pear: Adds sweetness and juicy texture that contrasts with the leaves.
Balsamic vinegar: Adds acidity and tang that balances the sweetness of the pear.
Pomegranate seeds: Add bursts of tart juice and crunch to the salad.

Flavor stand-ins for the pomegranate

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, butter, pear, pepper, vinegar):

Plumbetter flavor fit
Cherrybetter flavor fit
Grapebetter flavor fit
Pomegranatethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, pear, pepper, vinegar. 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).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.