Skip to main content
Salad

Carrot Salad

A salad of boiled carrots, onion, parsley, lettuce, egg, mustard, oil or butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Carrot Salad

Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Carrot Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the carrots until tender.

  2. Slice or cut the carrots into small pieces.

  3. Chop the onion raw.

  4. Mix the chopped onion with part of the parsley or lettuce.

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the egg.

  2. Mash the boiled egg into a paste.

  3. Add salt, pepper, mustard, oil or butter, and vinegar to the egg paste. Mix the mixture well.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad in a bowl. Garnish with the remaining parsley or lettuce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Carrots
Form the main body of the salad, providing sweetness and a tender bite once boiled.
Egg
Mashed into a paste to bind and thicken the dressing.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar in the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the richness of the egg and oil.
Oil or butter
Adds fat for smooth texture and mouthfeel in the dressing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, lettuce, egg, pepper, mustard, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, lettuce, egg, pepper, mustard, butter. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes