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Salad

Alligator Pear Salad

A salad of peeled alligator pears served on lettuce with a dressing of oil, orange juice, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Alligator Pear Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the alligator pears in half. Discard the seeds.

  2. Serve one half to each person or scoop the pulp from the skin with a teaspoon.

Serve

  1. Place the pears on a bed of lettuce.

  2. Drizzle with oil dressing made from oil, orange juice, and lemon juice.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pear + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pear + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together373 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

Alligator pears
Provide the creamy, rich flesh that forms the body of the salad.
Oil
Adds fat and richness to the dressing and carries its flavour.
Orange juice
Adds sweetness and mild acidity to the dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the fat and fruit.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, orange, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, orange, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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