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Salad

Pear Salad

A salad of canned pears served on lettuce with a cream cheese and heavy cream dressing, topped with nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pear Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select perfect halves of canned pears.

  2. Arrange pears on hearts of lettuce.

Make the dressing and assemble

  1. In a bowl, crumble the cream cheese into the heavy cream and beat until firm.

  2. Fill the pears with the dressing and sprinkle with nuts.

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

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

  2. Lettuce + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

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

  3. Cream + cream cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Pear + cream cheesetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  5. Cream cheese + nutstop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Canned pears
Provide the sweet, soft fruit base that the dressing sits in.
Hearts of lettuce
Give a crisp, cool base that holds the pears and contrasts their softness.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and richness, and whips into a thicker, spoonable dressing.
Cream cheese
Adds body and tang, and sets the dressing firmer when beaten with the cream.
Nuts
Add crunch and a toasty flavor that contrasts the soft pears and dressing.

The step that matters

Beating the cream cheese into the cream until firm. Beating incorporates air and lets the fat in the cream and cheese thicken together. Overbeating can make the dressing grainy or cause the cream to separate, so stop once it holds its shape.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, cream, cream cheese, nuts):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cream, cream cheese, nuts. 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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