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Salad

Avocado and Shrimp

A salad of avocado halves topped with shrimp, mayonnaise sauce, and garnished with olives and lime.

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Why it works: Avocado and shrimp work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 277 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

  1. Place avocado halves upside down on a plate of assorted lettuce, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Serve shrimp on top of the avocado halves and garnish with green and black olives.

  3. Slice limes in half, wrap each half in colored net, tie with a tiny ribbon, and place on the plate.

  4. Combine the sauce and let it sit for 1 hour.

  5. Cut up the shrimp into nice-size pieces and put them in the sauce.

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. Avocado + shrimptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together277 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Dill + tarragontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together105 recipes

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

  4. Tarragon + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together573 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Dill + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Avocados
Provide a creamy, rich fat base that holds the salad together on the plate.
Shrimp
Supply the main protein, with a firm, tender texture that contrasts the creamy sauce.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, forming the creamy body of the sauce that binds the ingredients.
Dill pickle
Adds acidity and tang that brightens the rich mayonnaise.
Onion
Contributes sharp, aromatic flavor that mellows as the sauce rests.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps stabilize the mayonnaise-based sauce.

The step that matters

Let the sauce sit for 1 hour. Resting lets the raw flavors of onion and garlic mellow and blend into the mayonnaise, so the sauce tastes balanced rather than sharp.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (avocado, shrimp, garlic, dill, tarragon, mustard, pepper):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against avocado, shrimp, garlic, dill, tarragon, mustard, pepper. 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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