Name: Vegetable Salad
Ingredients: 1 small carrot; a little cabbage; 1 small piece of green pepper; a few radishes; 1 white turnip; 1 small onion; a little celery; lettuce; salad dressing

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 ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Grind or chop all vegetables finely.
Serve on a lettuce leaf with salad 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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together526 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Radish + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together35 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot: Adds crisp texture and a mild sweetness to the salad.
Cabbage: Adds crunch and bulk, giving the salad its main body.
Radishes: Add a sharp, peppery bite and crisp texture.
White turnip: Adds a firm texture and mild, slightly peppery flavor.
Onion: Adds sharpness and aroma that brightens the mixed vegetables.
Lettuce: Provides a crisp leaf base that holds the chopped vegetables.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, cabbage, pepper, radish, turnip, celery, lettuce):

Beetrootfits better
Parsnipfits better
Broccolifits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, cabbage, pepper, radish, turnip, celery, 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.