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Salad

Italian Salad

A salad of sliced carrots, turnips, boiled potatoes, optional beet, onion or leek, dressed with French dressing and garnished with watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Italian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrot or turnip into slices, then into diamonds or squares using a vegetable cutter.

  2. Boil the cut vegetables in stock until tender.

  3. Cut the cold boiled potatoes and beet (if using) in the same way.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix all the vegetables in a basin.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped onion or leek, cover with French dressing, and serve garnished with watercress.

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. Turnip + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + watercresstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 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

Carrot
Forms the main cut vegetable pieces, adding colour and a mild sweetness when cooked until tender.
Turnip
Provides firm cut pieces that hold their shape after boiling, adding a mild, slightly peppery bite.
Potatoes
Add starchy body and soft texture, absorbing some of the French dressing.

The step that matters

Boil the cut vegetables in stock until tender. Cutting first gives pieces of even size so they cook at the same rate. Boiling only until tender keeps them firm enough to hold their diamond or square shape in the salad.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, potato, 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.

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