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Salad

Carrot Salad

A salad of boiled carrots, sugar, lemon juice, olive oil, thin onion slices, and watercress or salad leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Carrot Salad

Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Carrot Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrape and boil the carrots rapidly until tender.

  2. Cut the cooked carrots into very thin slices and place them in a glass salad bowl.

Dress and serve

  1. Sprinkle the carrots with sifted loaf sugar.

  2. Squeeze the juice of the lemon over the carrots.

  3. Pour on the olive oil or thick sweet cream just before serving.

  4. Arrange the thinly sliced onion and watercress or salad leaves around the edge of the dish.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  4. Olive + watercresstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together684 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the bulk of the salad and provide its main flavour and texture.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet carrots.
Olive oil or thick sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, coating the carrot slices and softening the sharpness of the lemon.
Onion
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite that contrasts with the sweet carrots.

The step that matters

Boil the carrots until tender. Carrots that are undercooked stay firm and fibrous, while overcooked ones turn soft and watery. Cooking them just until tender gives slices that hold their shape and a pleasant bite.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, sugar, lemon, olive, watercress):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, sugar, lemon, olive, watercress. 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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