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Spiced Pecan and Apple Salad with Honey Vinaigrette Recipe

We partnered with the blog The Jew & The Carrot for some High Holidays recipes. This recipe by Rachel Harkham, with apples, spiced nuts, and a sweet-sour...

By chow · From Open Recipes · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Honey and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 567 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

The recipe

6 to 8 servings
Prep15 min
Cook35 min

Ingredients

Contains: tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By chow. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Honey + appletop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together567 recipes

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

  2. Apple + cidertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,042 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together402 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Honey + vinegartop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,583 recipes

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

Vinegar and mustard share little aroma chemistry, yet 14,067 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, apple, cider, vinegar, mustard, olive):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Broccolibetter flavor fit
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, apple, cider, vinegar, mustard, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).