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Poinsettia Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Poinsettia Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel and chill the desired number of small firm tomatoes.

  2. Cut the tomatoes into eighths.

  3. Drain the slices of canned Hawaiian pineapples and chill.

  4. Cut the pineapples into eighths.

  5. Arrange the lettuce heart leaves in a nest and drain.

  6. Cut the lettuce into five sections like a pie.

  7. Place a slice of tomato cut side down into each section, letting the tomato radiate from the center.

  8. Fill the center with curled parsley.

  9. Marinate with French Dressing No. 2.

  10. Force Mayonnaise Dressing through a pastry bag around the curled parsley in the center of each section.

  11. Serve very cold.

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 + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pineapple + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Tomato + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, lettuce, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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