Name: Macedoine, or Vegetable Salad
Ingredients: boiled beets, sliced; celery, chopped; cold potatoes, sliced; onions, sliced; beans or green peas; boiled carrot, chopped; lettuce leaves; mayonnaise or French dressing

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Macedoine, or Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Combine the sliced potatoes, onions, boiled beets, chopped celery, beans or peas, and boiled carrot in a bowl.

Serve

Heap the mixed vegetables on a bed of lettuce leaves.
Drizzle with mayonnaise or French dressing before serving.

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.

Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together500 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 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

Cold potatoes: Provide bulk and a soft, starchy body that holds the salad together.
Mayonnaise or french dressing: Adds moisture and richness, coating the vegetables with fat and acidity.
Boiled beets: Contribute colour and a mildly sweet, earthy flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, potato, beans, carrot, lettuce):

Beetrootfits better
Turnipfits better
Parsnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, potato, beans, carrot, 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.