Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Vegetable Salad, Italian Style
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare turnips and carrots, cutting them into pieces with a column cutter the size of a quarter.
Cook the pieces in lightly salted water until tender, then cool and slice them finely.
Add equal quantities of boiled potatoes and pickled beets, cut in the same manner.
In a bowl, season the vegetables with salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, and a little Eavigote sauce.
Mix gently, arrange in a salad bowl, and garnish with hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters.
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.
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Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together3,107 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
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Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together14,555 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,458 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together562 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the turnip
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, potato, pepper, olive, vinegar, sauce, egg):
- Capsicumfits better
- Tomatofits better
- Spinachfits better
- Turnipthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, pepper, olive, vinegar, sauce, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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