Why it works: Grape and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,771 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
Grape Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Skin and remove the seeds from the Malaga grapes.
Blanch the filbert nuts by placing them in boiling water for 5 minutes, then remove the skin.
Stuff each grape with a blanched filbert nut.
Serve the stuffed grapes on a bed of lettuce.
Cover the grapes with a mixture of mayonnaise and whipped cream.
Garnish with sections of orange.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Grape + orangetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,771 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Filbert + nutstop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together38 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together174 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
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Lettuce + orangetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together373 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Grape + lettucetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together349 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the filbert
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grape, nuts, lettuce, cream, orange):
- Almondfits better
- Pistachiofits better
- Walnutfits better
- Filbertthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against grape, nuts, lettuce, cream, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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