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Salad

Spinach Salad

A salad of spinach, apple, raisins, and green onion dressed with oil, vinegar, chutney, curry powder, mustard, and salt.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 10 ingredients
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Illustration of Spinach SaladIllustration

Why it works: Spinach and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 503 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

  • Dressing

Directions

  1. Combine spinach, apple, raisins and green onion in a large bowl; refrigerate for 5 minutes.

  2. Combine vegetable oil, cider vinegar, chutney, curry powder, mustard and salt in a small bowl. Pour over salad; toss well to coat.

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.

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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. Spinach + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together503 recipes

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

  2. Apple + cidertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,042 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together402 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,243 recipes

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

Vinegar and mustard share little aroma chemistry, yet 14,067 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 that the dressing coats and carries.
Red apple
Adds crisp texture and natural sweetness that balances the tangy dressing.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Vegetable oil
Carries the curry and mustard flavours and gives the dressing body.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts the oil.

The step that matters

Toss well to coat. The dressing is an oil and vinegar emulsion that only partly mixes, so it must be tossed thoroughly to spread evenly over the leaves and apple. Uncoated spots taste bland or harsh, and leaves left to sit in the dressing without tossing can wilt unevenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, apple, onion, cider, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Grapebetter flavor fit
  2. Pearbetter flavor fit
  3. Plumbetter flavor fit
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, apple, onion, cider, vinegar, mustard. 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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