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Salad

Salsify Salad

A salad of cooked salsify strips dressed with olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, paprika, salt, and garnished with lettuce, parsley, and beetroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Salsify Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the cooked salsify strips in a salad bowl.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and paprika pepper.

  3. Mix the olive oil with the vinegar or lemon juice and pour over the salsify.

  4. Garnish with shredded lettuce, chopped parsley, and beetroot slices.

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. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salsify
Forms the base of the salad as the main vegetable, giving its texture and mild flavour.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth coating that carries flavour over the salsify strips.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, olive, vinegar, lettuce, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, olive, vinegar, lettuce, parsley. 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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