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Salad

Vegetable Salad

A salad of cooked potatoes, beets, celery, cabbage, walnuts, and boiled dressing served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine equal portions of cooked potatoes and beets with half the quantity of celery and cabbage.

  2. Add a few English walnuts and mix with boiled dressing.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  3. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Celery + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft starchy body of the salad.
Cooked beets
Add earthy sweetness and the deep colour that defines the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp, juicy crunch that contrasts with the soft vegetables.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and light body to the salad.
Boiled dressing
Adds moisture and tang that binds the vegetables together.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, cabbage, walnut, lettuce):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, cabbage, walnut, lettuce. 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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