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Salad

Macedoine Salad

A salad of cold cooked peas, turnips, beans, beets, and potatoes with minced onion and salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 400 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macedoine Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop an even quantity of cold cooked vegetables: peas, turnips, beans, beets, and potatoes.

  2. Add a little minced onion.

Dress and serve

  1. Cover with salad dressing and mix lightly.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked potatoes
Provides bulk and a soft, starchy body that holds the dressing.
Cold cooked peas
Adds sweetness and tender texture to the mixed vegetables.
Cold cooked beets
Contributes color and a mildly sweet, earthy flavor.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture, fat and tang that coat the chopped vegetables.

The step that matters

Mix lightly. Cooked vegetables are fragile, and vigorous stirring breaks them into a mush. Gentle folding keeps the pieces distinct and evenly coated with dressing.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, beans, potato, onion):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, beans, potato, onion. 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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