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Vegetable Salad

A salad of peas, string beans, lettuce, pepper‑grass, onions, and French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the peas and string beans in slightly salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the peas and beans, then cut the beans into three pieces lengthwise.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.

  2. Cover with French salad dressing, toss well, and serve.

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. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  4. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Provide tender, sweet body and bright color to the salad.
String beans
Add tender-crisp texture and bulk once boiled and cut.
Lettuce
Adds fresh, crisp leafy volume to the salad.
Onions
Add sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the dressing.

The step that matters

Boiling the peas and string beans until tender. Undercooking leaves the vegetables starchy and fibrous, while overcooking makes them soft and dull in color. Stopping at tender, then draining well, keeps them pleasantly textured and prevents a watery salad.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, beans, lettuce, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, beans, lettuce, pepper. 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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