Name: Vegetable Salad
Ingredients: cold vegetables (peas, string beans, cauliflower, asparagus tips, beets, celery); salad dressing

Why it works: Cauliflower and asparagus 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 ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

cold vegetables (peas, string beans, cauliflower, asparagus tips, beets, celery)
salad dressing

Directions

Use any kind of cold vegetables, not cut too fine.
Combine vegetables or use them by themselves.
Garnish the dish on which the salad is served.
Pour over any good salad 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.

Cauliflower + asparagustop 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).
Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together290 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Peas + asparagustop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together808 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Peas + cauliflowertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together313 recipes

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

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

Swap the celery

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

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Turmericfits better
Celerythe original

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