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Vegetable Salad

A salad of finely chopped cabbage, celery, cauliflower, asparagus, tomatoes, and onions, dressed with olive oil and celery seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the cabbage, celery, cauliflower, asparagus, tomatoes, and onions.

Make the salad

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped vegetables.

  2. Add the olive oil and celery seeds, mixing well.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad on lettuce leaves and drizzle with salad dressing.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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

Cabbage
Provides the crisp, crunchy bulk of the salad.
Cauliflower
Adds firm, crisp texture and substance to the salad.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the vegetables and carrying flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, celery, cauliflower, asparagus, tomato, olive, lettuce):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, cauliflower, asparagus, tomato, olive, 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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