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Dinner Tonight: Quinoa, Chickpea, and Spinach Salad with Smoked Paprika Dressing

By seriouseats · From Open Recipes · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Quinoa and chickpea share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 37 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

6 to 8 people

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By seriouseats. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Quinoa + chickpeatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together37 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + chickpeatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together142 recipes

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

  3. Quinoa + spinachtop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together79 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + minttop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chickpea + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the cherry tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quinoa, spinach, chickpea, cucumber, mint, sherry, wine):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  3. Limebetter flavor fit
  4. Cherry tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quinoa, spinach, chickpea, cucumber, mint, sherry, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).