Name: Pear Salad
Ingredients: ripe mellow pears; canned cherries (drained very dry); chopped blanched almonds; powdered sugar; 2 tablespoons nut butter; ½ cup canned cherry juice; juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Pear and cherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 119 recipes. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓

Pear Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Pare and core the pears, then cut them into thin slices while keeping them in shape.
Fill the cores with the drained canned cherries mixed with chopped blanched almonds.

Dress and serve

In a bowl, mix the nut butter with the cherry juice and lemon juice to make the dressing.
Pour the dressing over the prepared pears.
Sprinkle the salad with powdered sugar.

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.

Pear + cherrytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together119 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).
Almond + cherrytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together672 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,655 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Cherry + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,301 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pear + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together175 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe mellow pears: Form the main body of the salad, providing sweet, juicy fruit flesh.
Canned cherries: Add sweetness and a tart, juicy filling for the pear cores.
Chopped blanched almonds: Add crunch and a nutty texture to the cherry filling.
Nut butter: Thickens the dressing and adds richness and nutty flavor.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances sweetness.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, almond, sugar, butter, cherry):

Vanillafits better
Peachfits better
Figfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, almond, sugar, butter, cherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.