Skip to main content

Lettuce, Chicory & Apple Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

Make the dressing for this super healthy salad in a jar and keep leftovers in the fridge for during the week

Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Walnut and poppy seed share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 28 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 12
Prep15 min

Ingredients

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

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Whisk the vegetable oil, honey, lemon juice, chopped shallot, Dijon mustard and poppy seeds together in a large bowl for about 3 minutes until smooth and slightly thickened.

  2. Add the sliced apples to the dressing and toss for about 2 minutes so they are well coated and less likely to brown.

  3. Add the salad leaves, chicory leaves and halved cherry tomatoes to the bowl.

  4. Scatter the chopped walnuts over the salad and toss gently for about 1 minute to combine everything evenly with the dressing.

  5. Divide among plates or a serving platter and serve straight away.

By bbcgoodfood. 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. Walnut + poppy seedtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Shallot + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together842 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Apple + honeytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together567 recipes

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

  4. Chicory + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chicory + mustardtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the cherry tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicory, apple, walnut, honey, lemon, shallot, mustard):

  1. Orangebetter flavor fit
  2. Grapebetter flavor fit
  3. Pearbetter flavor fit
  4. Cherry tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicory, apple, walnut, honey, lemon, shallot, mustard. 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).