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Salad

Pear Salad

A salad of pears, lettuce, watercress, grapefruit pulp, Malaga grapes, dressed with olive oil, honey, paprika, egg white, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pear Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Place a half pear on crisp hearts of lettuce with a fringe of watercress.

  2. Fill the cavity in the center with grapefruit pulp and Malaga grapes.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, whisk together olive oil, honey, salt, paprika, egg white, and lemon juice until creamy.

  2. Pour the dressing over the salad.

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. Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + grapefruittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

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

  3. Pear + grapetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Pear + honeytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Grape + honeytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together707 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Emulsifies the oil and lemon juice, helping the dressing turn creamy and hold together.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smooth body to the dressing, carrying flavor across the salad.
Honey
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts through the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Whisking the dressing until creamy. Whisking the egg white with the oil and lemon juice forms an emulsion. If it is under-whisked, the oil and acid separate and the dressing turns thin and watery instead of creamy.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, lettuce, watercress, grapefruit, olive, honey, egg):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, lettuce, watercress, grapefruit, olive, honey, egg. 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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