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Salad

Macedonian Salad

A salad of boiled beet, carrot, celery, asparagus, peas, string beans, onion, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Macedonian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beet, carrot, beans, and celery into small pieces.

  2. Chop the onion very fine.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix all the vegetables together carefully.

  2. Add the mayonnaise and serve immediately.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Asparagus + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together292 recipes

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

  3. Asparagus + peastop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together949 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

Mayonnaise dressing
Coats the vegetables with rich, creamy fat and moisture, binding the salad together.
Boiled beet
Adds earthy sweetness and a vivid colour to the salad.
Boiled carrot
Adds mild sweetness and a firm, crisp-tender bite.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, slightly sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Add the mayonnaise and serve immediately. Mayonnaise is an emulsion that can thin and separate if overmixed or left standing, and the vegetables release moisture over time, making the salad watery. Dressing it just before serving keeps the texture crisp and creamy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, asparagus, peas, beans):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, asparagus, peas, beans. 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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