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Salad

Red Peppers and Cauliflower Salad

A salad of red peppers stuffed with boiled cauliflower and carrots, topped with mayonnaise and served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 151 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Red Peppers and Cauliflower Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fill

  1. Remove seeds from the peppers.

  2. Fill the peppers with boiled cauliflower and diced carrots.

  3. Top the peppers with additional diced carrots.

Serve

  1. Serve on a bed of crisp lettuce leaves.

  2. Drizzle with French or thin mayonnaise dressing.

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. Cauliflower + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

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

  4. Cauliflower + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Pepper + cauliflowertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Scarlet peppers
Act as edible cups that hold the filling and give a sweet, crisp bite.
Cauliflower
Provides the bulk of the filling with a mild, tender texture.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color to the filling through their diced pieces.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and richness that coats the vegetables and balances their flavor.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cauliflower, lettuce):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cauliflower, lettuce. 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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