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Salad

Pear and Plum Salad

A salad of sliced plums and pickled pears dressed with mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and chopped truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pear and Plum Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Skin the plums, remove the stones, and slice them neatly.

  2. Slice the pickled pears.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the plum and pear slices on a dish.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  3. Cover with mayonnaise sauce.

  4. Decorate the top with chopped truffles.

  5. Serve.

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. Plum + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

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

  2. Plum + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  3. Pear + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: butanol (wine).

  4. Sauce + truffletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes
  5. Pepper + truffletop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,106 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Victoria plums
Provide the main fresh fruit flavour and juicy, tender slices for the salad.
Pickled pears
Add sweet-sour acidity that contrasts with the rich mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and creaminess that coats the fruit and carries the seasoning.
Chopped truffles
Contribute a strong, earthy aroma as a finishing garnish.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, pepper, sauce, truffle):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, pepper, sauce, truffle. 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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