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Vegetable Salad

A salad of sliced potatoes, turnip, carrot, beet, parsley, salted and dressed with French or boiled dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the potatoes into small slices, the beet finer, and the turnip and carrot very fine.

  2. Chop the parsley with a sharp knife.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix all the vegetables thoroughly.

  2. Sprinkle with salt unless the vegetables were salted during cooking.

  3. Add the French dressing or boiled dressing.

  4. Keep the salad very cool until served.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and hold their shape when cut into slices.
Beet
Adds colour and a mild sweetness to the mixed vegetables.
French dressing or boiled dressing
Adds moisture and acidity that flavour and moisten the vegetables.

The step that matters

Keep the salad very cool until served. Cooked vegetables that sit warm can soften further and become watery, and dressing can thin out. Chilling keeps the texture firm and the flavours fresh.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, 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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