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Chicken & Chickpea Salad with Curry Yogurt Dressing

A gently-spiced healthy salad, that's packed with iron and calcium and counts as two of your five-a-day

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Why it works: Yogurt and chickpea match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 122 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 2
Prep15 min
Cook15 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, peanut (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. Place the chicken breasts in a saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat. Cook for 12 to 15 minutes until the thickest part reaches 165°F (74°C).

  2. While the chicken cooks, stir the curry powder into the Greek yogurt in a bowl. Add the lemon juice and chopped mint leaves and mix well.

  3. Drain the chicken and let it rest for 5 minutes. Slice or shred it into bite-sized pieces.

  4. In a large bowl, combine the drained and rinsed chickpeas, quartered cherry tomatoes and chopped red onion. Toss gently.

  5. Add the chicken to the bowl, spoon over the curry yogurt dressing, and toss until everything is coated.

  6. Scatter the reserved whole mint leaves and crushed peanuts over the salad and serve.

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. Yogurt + chickpeatop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Lemon + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Chicken + peanuttop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together541 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-ethyl-3,6-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Lemon + chickpeatop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 (chicken, yogurt, lemon, mint, chickpea, onion, peanut):

  1. Limebetter flavor fit
  2. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  3. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  4. Cherry tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, yogurt, lemon, mint, chickpea, onion, peanut. 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).