Name: Winter Salad
Ingredients: ½ pint boiled beets, cut into small pieces; ½ pint boiled carrots, cut into small pieces; ½ pint raw celery, cut into small pieces; ½ pint shredded cabbage (white or red); 1 small onion, chopped very fine; ½ teaspoon ground cloves; Salt and pepper to taste; Cold vinegar to moisten

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Winter Salad

Ingredients

½ pint boiled beets, cut into small pieces
½ pint boiled carrots, cut into small pieces
½ pint raw celery, cut into small pieces
½ pint shredded cabbage (white or red)
1 small onion, chopped very fine
½ teaspoon ground cloves
Salt and pepper to taste
Cold vinegar to moisten

Directions

Combine the boiled beets, carrots, raw celery, shredded cabbage, and chopped onion in a bowl. Mix well, then add ground cloves, salt, and pepper to taste.
Moisten the mixture with cold vinegar.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 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

What each ingredient does

Boiled beets: Provide the main colour and body of the salad, plus a mild sweetness.
Boiled carrots: Add tender bulk and mild sweetness that balances the vinegar.
Raw celery: Adds crisp texture that stays firm against the softer cooked vegetables.
Shredded cabbage: Contributes crunch and fresh body to the mixture.
Onion: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that softens with the vinegar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, cabbage, clove, pepper, vinegar):

Turnipfits better
Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, cabbage, clove, pepper, vinegar. 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.