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Salad

Salad a LA Macedoine

A mixed vegetable salad of peas, beans, cauliflower, asparagus, potato, carrot, pepper, and lettuce, dressed with French dressing or mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Salad a LA Macedoine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil several kinds of vegetables until tender and cool them.

  2. Cut the potato and French carrot into small dice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the vegetables together in equal quantities.

  2. Serve the mixture in a nest of fresh, crisp lettuce.

  3. Drizzle with French dressing or mayonnaise, if preferred.

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. Cauliflower + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together292 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Asparagus + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Cauliflower + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 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

Potato
Adds starchy bulk and a firm, tender texture to the salad.
French carrot
Adds sweetness, colour and a firm bite once cooked and diced.
Green peas
Contribute sweetness and soft texture to the mixed vegetables.
French dressing or mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, coating the vegetables and adding richness.

The step that matters

Boil the vegetables until tender. Each vegetable needs cooking to the right tenderness, since undercooked pieces stay hard and overcooked ones turn mushy and break apart when mixed. Cooling them before mixing keeps them from going limp and from dressing running out.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, cauliflower, asparagus, potato, carrot, pepper, 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.

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