Skip to main content

Crab & Avocado Salad with Pepper Lime Dressing

A fast and healthy salad is just the thing for a midweek meal as summer approaches

Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lime and avocado match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,117 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 2
Prep15 min

Ingredients

Contains: wheat, shellfish (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. Toast the breadcrumbs in a dry frying pan over medium heat, stirring often, for about 2 minutes until golden. Tip them onto a plate to cool.

  2. Make the dressing: in a small bowl, whisk the lime juice with a drizzle of olive oil, the Tabasco to taste and the chopped coriander.

  3. Divide the young spinach between two plates or spread it over a shallow serving dish.

  4. Scatter the avocado chunks and halved cherry tomatoes over the spinach.

  5. Flake the white crabmeat, checking for any bits of shell, and arrange it over the salad.

  6. Spoon the dressing over the salad and toss gently so the leaves are lightly coated.

  7. Scatter the toasted breadcrumbs on top 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. Lime + avocadotop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,117 recipes

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

  2. Lime + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,536 recipes

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

  3. Coriander + avocadotop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,094 recipes

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

  4. Olive + avocadotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,376 recipes

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

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

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

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 (olive, lime, sauce, coriander, spinach, avocado):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Mangobetter flavor fit
  3. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  4. Cherry tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, lime, sauce, coriander, spinach, avocado. 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).