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Salad

Chiffonade Salad

A salad of shredded green peppers, grapefruit pulp, diced tomatoes, and lettuce, dressed with French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Grapefruit and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Chiffonade Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut open the green peppers, remove seeds and veins, and cut into shreds.

  2. Drop the shreds into boiling water for 1 minute, then drain and cool.

  3. Cut the grapefruit in half and scoop out the pulp, cutting it into bits.

  4. Peel the tomatoes and cut them into small pieces.

  5. Shred the lettuce finely.

  6. Marinade each ingredient separately with French dressing.

Arrange and serve

  1. Place the grapefruit pulp in the center of a salad dish and arrange the peppers, tomatoes, and lettuce around it to showcase the colors.

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. Grapefruit + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + grapefruittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers
Provide crisp texture and fresh, slightly bitter flavor once shredded and blanched.
Grapefruit
Adds juicy sweet-sour acidity and bright flavor through its pulp.
Tomatoes
Contribute moisture, acidity, and a soft texture to the salad.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy base that gives the salad its fresh texture.

The step that matters

Blanching the pepper shreds for 1 minute. A brief dip in boiling water softens the raw bite of the peppers and sets their bright green color. Longer cooking would make them limp and dull.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, grapefruit, lettuce):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, grapefruit, lettuce. 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.

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