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Salad

Alligator Pear Salad

A salad of avocado, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Alligator Pear Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the alligator pear into rings and remove the seed.

  2. Lay each ring in a nest of lettuce leaves.

  3. Place a slice of tomato on each ring.

  4. Add a spoonful of mayonnaise on top of the tomato.

  5. Garnish with a tiny raw or pickled onion.

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. Avocado + tomatotop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,385 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Avocado
Provides the creamy, rich base that forms the body of the salad.
Tomato
Adds juiciness and a fresh, slightly acidic contrast to the rich avocado.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and richness, coating the tomato and avocado with a creamy dressing.

Swap the pear

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against avocado, lettuce, tomato, onion. 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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