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Salad

Vegetable Salad, Amebican Style

A salad of equal parts cooked artichoke bottoms, celery, celeriac, potatoes, carrots, beets, and shelled beans, dressed with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad, Amebican Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely slice equal quantities of cooked artichoke bottoms, celery, celeriac, potatoes, carrots, and beets into pieces of similar size.

  2. Place the sliced vegetables in a salad bowl and add shelled beans.

Dress and rest

  1. Season with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar, then mix gently.

  2. Cover the bowl and let the salad macerate in a cool place for one hour.

Serve

  1. Before serving, add a little more oil and vinegar, and dress the salad in a bowl.

  2. Garnish as desired.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked artichoke bottoms
Provide the tender, meaty base that makes up the bulk of the salad.
Celeriac
Adds firm, crisp texture that holds its shape when dressed.
Potatoes
Add body and starch, soaking up the oil and vinegar dressing.
Beets
Contribute earthy sweetness and colour to the mixed salad.
Shelled beans
Add creamy texture and mild body to balance the crisp vegetables.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the vegetables and sharpens the dressing.

The step that matters

Letting the salad macerate. Resting the cut vegetables in the dressed bowl lets salt and vinegar slowly season them and soften their surfaces. Too short a rest leaves the flavours separate; keeping it cool slows spoilage while the flavours blend.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, celery, carrot, beans, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, celery, carrot, beans, pepper, vinegar. 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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