Name: Onion Salad
Ingredients: 2 onions; 1 small bunch of radishes; 1 turnip; 2 tablespoons finely ground peanuts; oil; lime juice; large cabbage leaves; celery leaves; pinch of savory

Why it works: Radish and turnip share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Onion Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Slice the onions, radishes, and turnip finely. Mix the sliced vegetables together.
Add the ground peanuts, a little oil, and lime juice.

Serve

Serve the mixture on large cabbage leaves, sprinkled with celery leaves and a pinch of savory.

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.

Radish + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together35 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Radish + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together106 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Radish + limetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together53 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions: Provide the main sharp, savory flavor and crisp texture of the salad.
Radishes: Add peppery bite and crunch to the mixed vegetables.
Turnip: Adds firm crunch and a mild, slightly sweet earthiness.
Ground peanuts: Contribute nutty richness and a fatty, toasty depth of flavor.
Lime juice: Adds acidity that brightens the vegetables and balances the richness.

Swap the peanut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, radish, turnip, lime, cabbage, celery):

Lentilsfits better
Beansfits better
Chickpeafits better
Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, radish, turnip, lime, cabbage, celery. 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.