Name: Vegetable Salad
Ingredients: cold boiled potatoes; beets; string beans; peas; carrots; asparagus; turnip; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the cold boiled potatoes, beets, string beans, peas, carrots, asparagus, and turnip into bite-sized pieces.
Season the vegetables to taste.
Pour mayonnaise dressing over the seasoned vegetables and mix well.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together292 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Asparagus + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together328 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together400 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Peas + asparagustop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together808 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 peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, beans, carrot, asparagus, turnip):

Lentilsfits better
Chickpeafits better
Chestnutfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, beans, carrot, asparagus, turnip. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.