Name: Bean Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup cold cooked wax beans, broken into 1-inch lengths; 1 cup cold diced potatoes; 1 grated onion; 2 tablespoons minced parsley; White Cream Sauce; Watercress or lettuce for serving

Why it works: Parsley and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 469 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

1 cup cold cooked wax beans, broken into 1-inch lengths
1 cup cold diced potatoes
1 grated onion
2 tablespoons minced parsley
White Cream Sauce
Watercress or lettuce for serving

Directions

In a bowl, combine the cold cooked wax beans, diced potatoes, grated onion, and minced parsley. Toss gently to mix the ingredients.
Serve the salad on a bed of watercress or lettuce and drizzle with White Cream Sauce.

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.

Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together469 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together170 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Beans + watercresstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together45 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Wax beans: Provide the main bulk and mild, tender texture of the salad.
Potatoes: Add starchy body and soft texture that holds the salad together.
Onion: Adds sharp aroma and a pungent bite that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
Parsley: Contributes fresh, herbal aroma and a bright green note.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, potato, onion, cream, sauce, watercress):

Capersfits better
Garlicfits better
Cuminfits about as well
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, potato, onion, cream, sauce, watercress. 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.