Name: Vegetable Salad
Ingredients: ½ cup cold cooked beet; 1 cold cooked carrot; 1 cold cooked potato; 1 head lettuce; French dressing; salad dressing

Why it works: Carrot and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,107 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and crisp the lettuce.
Cut the cold carrots, beets, and potatoes into ¼-inch thick slices, then into ¼-inch cubes.
Cut part of the beans into ½-inch pieces.
Put the vegetables on separate plates and marinate with French dressing; set aside to cool.
When ready to serve, arrange the lettuce for individual servings.
Mix the cubed vegetables and place an equal quantity on each set of leaves.
Dress lightly with salad dressing and garnish with whole string beans.

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 + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together976 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together322 recipes

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