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Spinach Salad

A salad of spinach, pecan nuts, and cucumber dressed with olive oil or salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Spinach Salad

Why it works: Spinach and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 355 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Spinach Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the spinach leaves thoroughly.

  2. Chop the cucumber finely.

  3. Combine spinach, nut salad, and cucumber in a bowl.

Serve

  1. Serve with salad dressing or drizzle with olive oil.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Spinach + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Meat + olivetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Spinach + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Young tender spinach leaves
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides a tender, leafy base.
Young nut salad
Adds crunch and richness that contrast with the soft leaves.
Cucumber
Adds cool, crisp moisture that lightens the salad.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, meat, olive):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, meat, olive. 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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