Name: Salade Macédoine
Ingredients: cooked green beans; cooked white beans; cooked peas; cooked cauliflower; cooked potatoes; cooked asparagus tips; hearts of lettuce; salt

Why it works: Green beans and beans share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 36 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Salade Macédoine

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the cooked vegetables together in a bowl.
Season with salt to taste.
Serve chilled or at room temperature.

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.

Green beans + beanstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together36 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Cauliflower + asparagustop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together292 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together500 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Asparagus + lettucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together313 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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (green beans, beans, peas, cauliflower, asparagus, lettuce):

Beetrootfits better
Cucumberfits better
Broccolifits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against green beans, beans, peas, cauliflower, asparagus, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.