Name: Cabbage Salad
Ingredients: Cabbage or celery; Cooked string beans; Cooked asparagus; Cooked cauliflower; Nasturtium; Cress; Hard boiled eggs; Cooked or French dressing

Why it works: Asparagus and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Finely chop the cabbage or celery.
Chill the chopped vegetables until cold and crisp.
Combine with cooked string beans, asparagus, cauliflower, nasturtium, cress, and hard boiled eggs.
Serve with cooked or French 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.

Asparagus + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together292 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together305 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together290 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Cabbage + asparagustop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together101 recipes

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

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

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, asparagus, cauliflower, egg):

Spinachfits better
Broccolifits better
Leekfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, asparagus, cauliflower, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.