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Salad

Carrot Salad

A salad of boiled carrots, lettuce or watercress, cooked potato, vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, milk, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Carrot Salad

Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Carrot Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the boiled carrots and place them in a salad bowl.

  2. Add the washed and picked lettuce or watercress around the carrots.

Make the dressing

  1. Sieve the cooked potato and mix it with vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper to taste.

  2. Add milk to thin the mixture, then pour it over the carrots.

Serve

  1. Decorate the salad with chopped 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.

  1. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the main body of the salad and add sweetness and colour.
Cooked potato
Sieved, it thickens the dressing and gives it a smooth, creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sweetness of the carrots.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.
Milk
Thins the potato mixture into a pourable dressing with mild richness.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, potato, vinegar, mustard, pepper, parsley, milk):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, potato, vinegar, mustard, pepper, parsley, milk. 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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