Name: Beet Salad
Ingredients: 2 cups raw red beets, grated or ground; 1 hard-boiled egg (yolk mashed, white chopped); Salt to taste; Lemon juice to taste; Lettuce leaves for serving; Parsley sprig for garnish

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beet Salad

Ingredients

2 cups raw red beets, grated or ground
1 hard-boiled egg (yolk mashed, white chopped)
Salt to taste
Lemon juice to taste
Lettuce leaves for serving
Parsley sprig for garnish

Directions

Prepare

Grate or grind the raw red beets to make 2 cups.
Mash the yolk of the hard-boiled egg and chop the white.

Mix and serve

Mix the egg with the beets.
Add salt and lemon juice to taste.
Serve on lettuce leaves and garnish with a sprig of parsley.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together44,316 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Raw red beets: Provide the main body, colour and earthy sweetness of the salad.
Hard-boiled egg: Adds richness and a creamy texture from the mashed yolk, with chopped white for bulk.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the earthy beets.