Name: Green Salad with Yummy Vinaigrette
Ingredients: 5 cups mixed salad greens; ½ medium red onion thinly sliced into half-circles; ⅓ cup dried cranberries; ¼ cup walnut halves; ⅓ cup crumbled blue cheese

Why it works: Walnut and blue cheese work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 100 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

5 cups mixed salad greens
½ medium red onion thinly sliced into half-circles
⅓ cup dried cranberries
¼ cup walnut halves
⅓ cup crumbled blue cheese

Directions

Wash lettuce and dry thoroughly in a salad spinner or wrap in a towel.
Refrigerate until ready to toss.
Whisk dressing in a glass measuring cup until smooth.
Toss together with the lettuce, onion, cranberries and nuts.
Place onto salad plates and top with a small amount of crumbled cheese.
Category:Cathy's Recipes
Category:Salad Recipes
Category:Leafy and salad vegetable Recipes
Category:Red onion Recipes
Category:Dried cranberry Recipes
Category:Walnut Recipes
Category:Blue cheese Recipes
Category:Balsamic vinegar Recipes
Category:Red wine vinegar Recipes
Category:Cranberry juice Recipes
Category:Dijon mustard Recipes

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.

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.

Walnut + blue cheesetop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together100 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Onion + blue cheesetop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together329 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).
Onion + walnuttop 12% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,771 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, blue cheese):

Lettucebetter flavor fit
Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Spinachbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, blue cheese. 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).