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Chinese Chicken Salad I

"I devised this salad on my own...it's not only relatively low in fat but great in taste too! If sweet and sour sauce is unavailable, plum sauce can be substituted."

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Why it works: Chicken and sesame match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 939 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

The recipe

4 servings
Prep15 min

Ingredients

Contains: tree nuts, sesame (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 torn, washed and dried romaine and the fresh bean sprouts in a large salad bowl and toss to combine.

  2. In a small bowl, stir the sweet and sour sauce with the ground ginger and ground black pepper until smooth.

  3. Crush the cornflakes lightly in a zip-top bag with your hands, leaving some larger pieces.

  4. Keep the shredded cooked chicken chilled until ready to use. Add it to the dressing and toss to coat evenly.

  5. Add the dressed chicken to the romaine and bean sprouts and toss gently until everything is evenly coated.

  6. Top the salad with the toasted sliced almonds, the crushed cornflakes, and the sesame seeds if using.

  7. Serve right away so the cornflakes stay crisp.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Chicken + sesametop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together939 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Lettuce + sesametop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together193 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Ginger + sesametop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Almond + sesametop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together203 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  5. Ginger + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the sesame

The recipe marks sesame as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, ginger, lettuce, chicken, almond, pepper):

  1. Sesamethe original
  2. Cashew nutabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, ginger, lettuce, chicken, almond, pepper. 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).