Name: Radish and Bean Salad
Ingredients: 1 bunch large red radishes; 2-3 young cooked carrots; similar quantity of cooked French beans; salt to taste; pepper to taste; olive oil to taste; tarragon vinegar to taste; finely chopped chervil to taste

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Radish and Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove the leaves and root from the radishes and slice them thinly.

Assemble and serve

In a bowl, combine the sliced radishes, sliced carrots, and cut French beans.
Season the mixture with salt, pepper, olive oil, tarragon vinegar, and chopped chervil.
Mix the vegetables carefully and serve in a salad bowl.

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.

Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together824 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,443 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + cherviltop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together355 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Beans + cherviltop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together60 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,470 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Red radishes: Provide the crisp texture and peppery bite that define the salad.
Cooked carrots: Add sweetness and a tender, soft texture against the crisp radishes.
French beans: Contribute a tender bite and mild, fresh vegetable flavour.
Olive oil: Adds fat and richness, carrying the flavour of the herbs and vinegar.
Tarragon vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the vegetables and balances the oil.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, beans, pepper, olive, tarragon, vinegar, chervil):

Lettucefits better
Shallotfits better
Chivefits better
Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, beans, pepper, olive, tarragon, vinegar, chervil. 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.