Name: Beet Salad
Ingredients: left-over sliced beets; French dressing; celery; whole wheat or black toast; butter

Why it works: Celery and wheat work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 149 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Beet Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the sliced beets with French dressing.
Serve with celery and toast spread with butter.

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.

Celery + wheattop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together149 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,002 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Celery + buttertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).