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Salad

Beet and Bean Salad

A chilled salad of lima beans and pickled beets seasoned with salt, pepper, vinegar, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lima beans and olive work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beet and Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and drain the Lima beans, then wipe them dry.

  2. Cut the pickled beets into small squares.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the beans and beets tastefully in circles on a dish.

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

  3. Serve very 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. Lima beans + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 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

Lima beans
Provide the main body and bulk of the salad.
Pickled beets
Add tangy flavor and color, contributing acidity and sweetness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavors and balances the oil.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and moistening the salad.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Soybeanfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, olive. 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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