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Salad

Beef and Blue Cheese Salad

A salad of romaine lettuce topped with sliced grilled tenderloin, blue cheese, raisins soaked in whiskey, and a mayonnaise-based dressing.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and blue cheese work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 193 recipes mention both. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

The recipe

Time1 hour

Ingredients

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

Directions

Prepare the raisins and dressing

  1. Soak raisins in whiskey for 1 hour.

  2. Drain raisins and set aside.

  3. In another bowl, combine all other ingredients except lettuce and tenderloin. Whisk until smooth.

  4. Refrigerate dressing for 1 hour.

Assemble the salad

  1. Arrange lettuce on a large platter or salad bowl.

  2. Pour dressing over lettuce.

  3. Slice tenderloin and arrange on top of salad.

  4. Sprinkle raisins over salad.

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.

  1. Vinegar + blue cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together193 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,483 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Blue cheese
Adds a sharp, salty tang that gives the dressing its characteristic flavor.
Mayonnaise
Forms the creamy body of the dressing and carries the other flavors.
Buttermilk
Thins the mayonnaise into a pourable dressing and adds mild acidity.
Golden raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture, softened by soaking in whiskey.
Romaine lettuce
Provides the crisp, cool base that holds the dressing and toppings.

The step that matters

Drain the raisins well before adding them. Raisins soaked in whiskey hold liquid; excess moisture can thin the dressing and make the salad soggy, so draining them thoroughly keeps the texture intact.

Flavor stand-ins for the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, buttermilk, lemon, vinegar, blue cheese, pepper, lettuce):

  1. Limebetter flavor fit
  2. Cherrybetter flavor fit
  3. Orangebetter flavor fit
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, buttermilk, lemon, vinegar, blue cheese, pepper, lettuce. 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.

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