Name: Winter Salad
Ingredients: Cooked potatoes; Little celery; Cooked beetroot; 1 or 2 hard-boiled eggs; Cooked sprouts; Salad dressing; Cauliflower

Why it works: Beetroot and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Winter Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

Clean and dice the celery.
Slice the potatoes and beetroot, then stamp out shapes with a cutter.
Cook the sprouts nicely and cut them into quarters.

Assemble and serve

Heap the trimmings in a salad bowl and arrange the cut vegetables around them.
Garnish with hard-boiled eggs, if desired.
Pour the salad dressing over the top.

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.

Beetroot + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together146 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + beetroottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together330 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Celery + beetroottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together652 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + cauliflowertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together488 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,047 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 starchy bulk and a soft, tender texture in the salad.
Cooked beetroot: Adds sweetness, earthy flavour and a deep colour to the salad.
Cooked sprouts: Contribute a slightly bitter, firm texture and savoury flavour.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and acidity that coats and seasons the vegetables.

Swap the potato

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

Lettucefits better
Horseradishfits better
Turnipfits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, beetroot, egg, cauliflower. 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.