Name: Vegetable Salad
Ingredients: 1 cold cooked beet, diced; 1 cold cooked carrot, diced; 1 cold cooked potato, diced; a few cold green string beans, chopped; mayonnaise dressing; crisped leaves from 1 head of lettuce

Why it works: Beans and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

1 cold cooked beet, diced
1 cold cooked carrot, diced
1 cold cooked potato, diced
a few cold green string beans, chopped
mayonnaise dressing
crisped leaves from 1 head of lettuce

Directions

Prepare

Dice the cold cooked beet, carrot, and potato into ¼-inch cubes.
Chop the cold green string beans.

Assemble

Mix the diced vegetables with mayonnaise dressing.
Garnish with crisped leaves of lettuce.

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.

Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together500 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,443 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + beanstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together976 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

Cooked beet, carrot, and potato: Provide the bulk of the salad and its texture, holding their shape when cut into cubes.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture and richness, coating the vegetables and binding them together.
Green string beans: Add crisp texture and a fresh, mild vegetable flavour to the salad.