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Spinach Salad with Avocado, Red Onion, and Toasted Pecans

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Why it works: Spinach and avocado match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 188 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

The recipe

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 biggirlssmallkitchen. 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. Spinach + avocadotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together188 recipes

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

  2. Avocado + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,376 recipes

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

  3. Avocado + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,653 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Spinach + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,243 recipes

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

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

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, avocado, onion, honey, olive):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, avocado, onion, honey, 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).