Name: Vegetable Salad
Ingredients: 1 large carrot, boiled; 1 large potato, boiled; 1 medium red beet, boiled; 3 hard boiled eggs; ½ cup olives, sliced; ¼ cup capers; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves for serving

Why it works: Capers and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the boiled carrot, potato, beet, and eggs into ½ inch cubes.

Combine

In a bowl, combine the cubed vegetables, olives, and capers.

Serve

Serve the salad on lettuce leaves and drizzle with mayonnaise 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.

Capers + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together976 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potato: Adds bulk and a starchy, soft body that holds the salad together.
Eggs: Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the mix of vegetables.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad and coating the cubes.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, egg, olive, capers, lettuce):

Chivefits better
Beetrootfits better
Mustardfits better
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, olive, capers, 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.