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Salad

Alligator Pear Salad

A salad of pears, celery, mayonnaise, and pecans served in pear shells on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Alligator Pear Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pears

  1. Cut the pears in half lengthwise and scoop out the inside.

Make the filling

  1. Chop half of the scooped pear and mix it with the chopped celery and mayonnaise dressing.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the pear shells with the mixture and top with chopped pecan nuts.

  2. Serve on lettuce leaves and sprinkle additional chopped pecan nuts on top.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pear + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

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

  3. Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Pear + celerytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Celery + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the fruity base and hollow shells that hold the filling.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft pear.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and richness, binding the chopped filling together.
Pecan nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour on top.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, celery, 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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