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Salad

Vegetable Salad, Italian Style

A salad of sliced turnips, carrots, boiled potatoes, pickled beets, and hard‑boiled eggs dressed with olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and Eavigote sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad, Italian Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Prepare turnips and carrots, cutting them into pieces the size of a quarter using a column cutter.

  2. Cook the pieces in lightly salted water until tender.

  3. Cool the cooked pieces.

  4. Slice the cooled pieces finely.

  5. Add equal quantities of boiled potatoes and pickled beets, cut in the same manner.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, season the vegetables with salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, and a little Eavigote sauce. Mix gently.

  2. Arrange the salad in a bowl.

  3. Garnish with hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Provide the main crisp-tender body of the salad after cooking.
Carrots
Add sweetness and firm texture to the salad.
Boiled potatoes
Add starchy bulk that soaks up the dressing and holds the pieces together.
Pickled beets
Add acidity and colour from the pickling liquid.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel that carries flavour through the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the vegetables and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Cooking the turnips and carrots until tender. Cook them in lightly salted water only until tender. Undercooked pieces stay hard and taste raw, while overcooked pieces turn mushy and break apart when sliced and mixed.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, potato, pepper, olive, vinegar, sauce, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, pepper, olive, vinegar, sauce, egg. 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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