Name: Alligator Pear Salad
Ingredients: alligator pears (avocados); French dressing or mayonnaise; crisp lettuce leaves

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 ↓

Alligator Pear Salad

Ingredients

alligator pears (avocados)
French dressing or mayonnaise
crisp lettuce leaves

Directions

Prepare

Wash the alligator pears thoroughly.
Cut them into squares or lengthwise pieces.

Assemble and serve

Mix the pieces with French dressing or mayonnaise.
Serve on crisp lettuce leaves.

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.

Avocado + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together464 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pear + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together92 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pear + avocadotop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together24 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Avocados: Provide the creamy flesh that forms the body of the salad.
French dressing or mayonnaise: Adds fat and acidity that coat the avocado and add flavour and moisture.
Lettuce leaves: Offer a crisp, cool base that contrasts with the soft avocado.