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Salad

Zebra Salad

A salad of shredded green peppers, lettuce or endive, tomatoes, grapefruit, and French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and grapefruit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Zebra Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Seed the green peppers and boil them for 2-3 minutes, then cut into shreds.

  2. Shred the dark and light leaves of the lettuce or endive separately.

  3. Cut the tomatoes into shreds and remove the peel and skin from the grapefruit.

Arrange and serve

  1. Arrange each ingredient separately on a serving plate, creating a circle of light and dark green around the edge.

  2. Pour French dressing over the arranged salad.

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. Lettuce + grapefruittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + grapefruittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce or endive
Forms the leafy base, with dark and light leaves giving the salad its contrasting green colour.
Green peppers
Add crisp texture and a fresh, slightly bitter flavour once shredded.
Tomatoes
Add juiciness and acidity, along with red colour and moisture to the salad.
Grapefruit
Adds sharp citrus acidity and juicy segments that contrast with the vegetables.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lettuce, grapefruit. 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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