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Salad

Macedoine Salad

A salad of mixed cooked vegetables served on lettuce and garnished with radishes and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Combine cold cooked peas, carrots, beets, string beans, and celery in a bowl.

  2. Mix each vegetable separately with French or boiled dressing.

Arrange and garnish

  1. Arrange the vegetables in sections to form a circular mound on a bed of lettuce. Place contrasting colors of vegetables next to each other.

  2. Garnish with radishes, celery tips, and small lettuce leaves.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

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

  4. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 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 cooked peas
Provide the main bulk and mild, sweet flavor of the salad.
Carrots
Add firm texture and sweetness, and bright color that contrasts with the other vegetables.
Beets
Add earthy sweetness and deep color, and stain nearby vegetables if mixed heavily.
String beans
Add crisp texture and a fresh, green bite.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, slightly sharp flavor.
French or boiled dressing
Adds moisture and tang, coating the vegetables to season them.

The step that matters

Mix each vegetable separately with the dressing. Beets can colour the other vegetables if they are tossed together, so dressing each one on its own keeps the colours clean and the flavours distinct.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

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