Name: Boiled Vegetable Salad
Ingredients: left-over asparagus; string beans; cow beans; lima beans; peas; cauliflower; French dressing; lettuce; mayonnaise

Why it works: Beans and lima beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Boiled Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Combine left-over asparagus, string beans, cow beans, lima beans, peas, and cauliflower in a bowl.
Pour French dressing over the vegetables and let sit for 30 minutes before serving.
Add lettuce and mayonnaise just before serving.

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.

Beans + lima beanstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together156 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Asparagus + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Asparagus + beanstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together292 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together500 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Lima beans + peastop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together85 recipes

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

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

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, beans, peas, cauliflower, lettuce):

Lentilsfits better
Lima beansthe original
Chestnutfits about as well
Chickpeafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, beans, peas, cauliflower, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.