Name: Pear Salad
Ingredients: 1 oz macerated pears; 1 oz flaked pine kernels; 3 oz chipped pears

Why it works: Pear and pine share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Pear Salad

Ingredients

1 oz macerated pears
1 oz flaked pine kernels
3 oz chipped pears

Directions

In a bowl, beat together the macerated pears and flaked pine kernels until creamy.
Pour the mixture over the chipped pears.

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.

Pear + pinetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together20 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Macerated pears: Provide moisture and soft pear sweetness to the creamy base.
Flaked pine kernels: Add rich fat and a nutty texture that thickens the creamy mixture.
Chipped pears: Provide fresh, firm pear pieces that contrast with the creamy topping.

“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.