Name: Italian Salad
Ingredients: 3 cups cooked green peas; 3 tablespoons cooked carrots; 3 tablespoons diced cooked turnips; 3 tablespoons cooked string beans; French dressing; chopped gherkins; olives; chives; pickled beets

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Italian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Mix the green peas, carrots, turnips, and string beans in a bowl.
In a separate bowl, combine French dressing with chopped gherkins, olives, and chives.

Assemble and serve

Moisten the mixed vegetables with the dressing mixture.
Garnish with pickled beets cut into fancy shapes.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together109 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together180 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together400 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas: Form the bulk of the salad and provide a tender, mild body.
French dressing: Adds moisture and acidity that coats and flavours the vegetables.
Carrots: Add sweetness and a firm, tender texture to the mix.
String beans: Add tender texture and bulk to the vegetable mixture.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, beans, olive, chive):

Lentilsfits better
Chickpeafits better
Chestnutfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, beans, olive, chive. 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.