Name: Carrot Salad
Ingredients: 2 cups raw carrots; 1 cup celery; 1 cup English walnuts; cream dressing; boiled egg; parsley

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Carrot Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Pare and grind the raw carrots using the coarsest knife of your grinder.
Chop the celery and English walnuts.

Assemble and serve

Combine the carrots, celery, and walnuts in a bowl.
Pour cream dressing over the mixture.
Garnish with sliced boiled egg and parsley.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together865 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw carrots: Form the main body of the salad and add crisp texture and natural sweetness.
Celery: Adds crunch and a fresh, slightly salty vegetal flavour.
English walnuts: Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavour that contrasts with the carrots.
Cream dressing: Adds moisture and richness, coating the vegetables and binding them together.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, cream, egg, parsley):

Walnutthe original
Lentilsfits about as well
Beansfits about as well
Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, cream, egg, parsley. 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.