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Salad

Italian Salad

A mixed vegetable salad of peas, string beans, carrot, turnip, beet, cauliflower, and asparagus dressed with oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Italian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Shell the peas and cut off the asparagus heads.

  2. Cut the string beans into diamond shapes.

  3. Peel and slice the carrot and turnip into cylinders, each ¼ inch thick and 1 inch long.

  4. Cut the cauliflower into small branches.

Cook and cool

  1. Boil all the vegetables and then place them in cold water to preserve their color.

  2. Boil the beet as directed in the recipe for Cardinal Sauce, then cut it into cylinders like the carrot and turnip.

Dress and serve

  1. Arrange all the vegetables on a salad dish.

  2. Dress the salad with 2 tablespoons of oil, 1 tablespoon of vinegar, 1 teaspoon of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of pepper, then serve.

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 + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together292 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + asparagustop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 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

Green peas
Provide sweetness and tender texture as a main salad vegetable.
Cauliflower
Adds firm, crisp texture and bulk to the salad.
Oil
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavor across the vegetables.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Boil all the vegetables and then place them in cold water. Boiling briefly and then chilling in cold water stops the cooking so the vegetables stay tender-crisp and keep their bright color. Overcooking dulls color and softens texture.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, carrot, turnip, cauliflower, asparagus, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Peasthe original
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, turnip, cauliflower, asparagus, vinegar, pepper. 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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