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Cranberry, Glazed Walnut, Orange, Avocado, and Blue Cheese Salad

"I first made this salad for my family's Thanksgiving dinner several years ago as a starter, and it was a big hit. This recipe was inspired after I had some pear and walnut salad at a restaurant. Since I'm a busy professional woman and don't have lots of time to cook, I wanted to make something quick and easy, yet tasty, using premade ingredients you can find at regular grocery stores."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mandarin orange and cranberry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 7 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

4 servings
Prep5 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, tree nuts (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 mixed salad greens with spinach in a large salad bowl.

  2. Add the sweetened dried cranberries, glazed walnuts, drained mandarin oranges, and diced avocado over the greens.

  3. Sprinkle the crumbled bleu cheese over the top.

  4. Drizzle with the cranberry vinaigrette salad dressing, starting with 2 tablespoons, and toss gently just before serving.

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. Mandarin orange + cranberrytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Walnut + cranberrytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Spinach + avocadotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together188 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + avocadotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together57 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together221 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the mandarin orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, walnut, cheese, avocado, cranberry):

  1. Limebetter flavor fit
  2. Cherrybetter flavor fit
  3. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  4. Mandarin orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, walnut, cheese, avocado, cranberry. 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).