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Salad

Beet Salad with Vegetables

A salad of sliced beets, artichoke bottoms, potatoes, white beans, and glazed onions, seasoned with salt, pepper, vinegar, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beet Salad with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the beets and combine them with equal parts of artichoke bottoms, potatoes, white beans, and glazed onions.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, vinegar, and olive oil.

  3. Arrange the salad in a bowl and garnish with watercress.

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. Artichoke + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Artichoke + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Artichoke + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Potato + watercresstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 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

Beets
Provide the main bulk, earthy flavour and colour of the salad.
Artichoke bottoms
Add a tender, mild body that balances the earthy beets.
Potatoes
Add starchy bulk and a soft texture that absorbs the dressing.
White beans
Contribute creamy texture and substance to the mixed salad.
Glazed onions
Add sweetness that offsets the acidity of the vinegar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, potato, beans, pepper, vinegar, olive, watercress):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, potato, beans, pepper, vinegar, 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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