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Best Ever Pasta Salad

"This is a tasty and filling chicken pasta salad. Perfect served with a croissant and iced tea for a summer luncheon! Enjoy."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 14 ingredients
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Best Ever Pasta Salad

Why it works: Pasta and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 89 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Best Ever Pasta Salad

8 servings
Prep35 min

Ingredients

Directions

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

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

712Calories
49 gProtein
29 gFat
63 gCarbs

Counts 13 of 14 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 13 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Pasta1 cup cooked (140g)220
Chicken100g cooked165
Olive Oil1 tbsp (14g)119
Cheese1 oz (28g) cheddar113
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Bell Pepper1 medium (119g)31
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Dill5 sprigs fresh (1g) / 1 tsp dried4
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Mustard1 tsp (5g) yellow3
Tarragon1 tsp dried (0.5g)2
Capers1 tbsp (9g) drained2
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Pimentonot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pasta + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Tarragon + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

Swap the dill

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pasta, white wine, vinegar, tarragon, mustard, capers, pepper):

  1. Fennelfits about as well
  2. Dillthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pasta, white wine, vinegar, tarragon, mustard, capers, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.