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Pear Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pear Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Make balls of cream cheese.

  2. Roll the balls in chopped Wampum olives.

  3. Place the cheese balls in the center of Hiawatha pears.

  4. Serve on lettuce leaves with your choice of dressing.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Pear + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

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

  3. Olive + peartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  5. Cream cheese + peartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

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

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream cheese, olive, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, olive, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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