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Alugator Pear Salad

A chilled avocado salad with olive oil, lemon, onion, cayenne, served over shaved ice and garnished with lettuce hearts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Avocado and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 464 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Alugator Pear Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill the avocados in ice until ready to serve.

  2. Cut the avocados in half lengthwise and remove the pits.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix olive oil, lemon juice, onion, salt, and cayenne to make the dressing.

Serve

  1. Fill the avocado halves with the dressing.

  2. Serve on a deep dish filled with shaved ice and garnish with lettuce hearts.

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. Avocado + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together464 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Avocado + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Avocado + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,653 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 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

Avocados
Provide the creamy, rich flesh that forms the body of the salad.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smooth richness, carrying flavor through the dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and slows browning of cut avocado.
Onion
Contributes a sharp, aromatic bite to the dressing.

The step that matters

Cut the avocados in half lengthwise and remove the pits. Avocado flesh browns quickly once exposed to air, so the cut halves should be dressed promptly. Acidic lemon juice in the dressing helps slow discoloration, but the flesh should not sit cut for long before serving.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (avocado, olive, lemon, onion, pepper, lettuce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against avocado, olive, lemon, onion, pepper, lettuce. 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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