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Salad

Salade Jardiniere

A salad of boiled root vegetables, asparagus, peas, and string beans, dressed with oil, vinegar, mayonnaise, and decorated with amber jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salade Jardiniere

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the white turnip, yellow rutabaga, red carrot, parsnip, and celery stalks.

  2. Boil them in salted water until tender.

  3. Use a small vegetable cutter to stamp the boiled vegetables into star or flower shapes.

  4. Stamp cooked beets into star shapes and set aside.

  5. Boil asparagus heads, green peas, and cut string beans into diamond shapes.

Dress and assemble

  1. Mix all vegetables (except beets and some peas or asparagus) with enough oil and vinegar to moisten.

  2. Transfer the mixture between bowls a few times to combine.

  3. Pile the vegetable mixture in the center of a serving dish.

  4. Pour mayonnaise over it.

  5. Scatter the beet shapes and green peas on top.

  6. Decorate the edge of the dish with blocks of amber jelly, lettuce leaves, tiny bunches of cress, and flowers as desired.

  7. Cut the amber jelly into cubes and then into three-sided blocks for decoration.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Rutabaga + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together74 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

White turnip
Provides firm, tender pieces that hold their shape in the salad.
Oil
Coats the cooked vegetables, adding moisture and a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the mixed vegetables.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess, binding the dressing over the vegetables.
Amber jelly
Sets into firm, glossy blocks that give structure and decoration at the edge.

The step that matters

Boiling the vegetables until tender. Under-cooked vegetables stay hard and resist cutting into neat shapes, while over-cooked ones turn soft and lose their form. Boil each vegetable only until it is just tender.

Swap the rutabaga

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, parsnip, celery, asparagus, peas, beans):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Rutabagathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, parsnip, celery, asparagus, peas, beans. 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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